Qass 

Book ^V/nS U G 




I 



rhe UPLIFTED HANDS 

AND OTHER SERMONS 



LEWIS GILBERT WILSON 

Author of *< Glimpses of a Better Life in the Journey of 
Experience ' * 



Published by THE WOMEN^S ALLIANCE 
of the HOPEDALE MEMORIAL CHURCH 



1^ l-l 



I t^i vy 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Uplifted Hands ....... i 

II. The Light of the World 26 

III. The Approved Workman 49 

IV. The Gift of God ........ 69 

V. The Primal Glory 90 

VI. The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, 113 



I. 



THE UPLIFTED HANDS. 



" But Moses' hands were heavy ; and they took a 
stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon ; and 
Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the 
one side, and the other on the other side ; and his 
hands were steady until the going down of the sun." — 
Exodus xvii. 12. 



HOEVER has made a long and 



T T perilous journey, — worn out, hun- 
gry, thirsty, — and even then has not 
arrived, and is compelled to look for- 
ward with apprehension and doubt about 
the possibility of reaching his destination, 
can imagine the condition of the Israelites 
at the time indicated by the chapter which 
I have read.* Generally speaking, a 
hungry, thirsty, weary, and discouraged 
man is not an agreeable companion. We 
are not surprised if he is petulant, irritable, 
and cowardly. He must be a man of no 
little strength of character to preserve the 




♦ The seventeenth chapter of Exodus. 



2 The Uplifted Hands 

patience and the consideration for others 
that simple courtesy demands. 

Moses was a man of great moral hero- 
ism. His vast shado^vy figure looms up 
upon the dusky background of history, — 
one of those phenomenal personalities from 
whom races date their existence. But, in 
the story ^ even Moses was bitterly assailed 
by these miserable slaves. Their patience 
was exliausted. The man to whom they 
had looked for freedom had brought them 
into distress beside which their life under 
the Egyptian task-masters seemed like the 
'*good old times." They had trusted him, 
now they began to curse him. He had 
apparently deceived them. That wonder- 
ful land he had pictured to their dull ap- 
prehension was only a dream, — a fool's 
paradise, it did not exist. Wherefore 
hast thou brought us up out of Egypt to 
kill us and our children with thirst } " 
This was their bitter misei^ere. The flesh- 
pots of Egypt, the lash of their overseers, 



The Uplifted Hands 3 

the degradation of their former serfdom, 
were preferable to this vague and ever- 
deceitful dream of a Promised Land. It 
were better to have died making bricks 
without straw than to have undertaken this 
God-forsaken enterprise ! 

Moses had to pay the penalty of leader- 
ship. They did not understand him. 

What shall I do with this people ? 
They be almost ready to stone me," was 
the burden of his lamentation. 

And then, as soon as he has managed to 
supply them with water to drink, and they 
begin to feel a little better, there comes a 
rumor to the camp that the Amalekites 
are sounding an alarm among all the tribes 
of Paran and the region roundabout, that 
they are forming a federated army and are 
gathering in overwhelming numbers to 
crush them altogether. Then the old dis- 
content breaks out anew, and a general 
wail goes up from the Hebrew camp. 
They have no arms, they do not know how 



4 The Uplifted Hands 

to fight, they are encumbered by their 
famihes and their camp equipage, they are 
not organized, they have no leader, they 
are the last miserable people in the world 
to resist a formidable enemy. All is dis- 
order and impotence. Disgust, bewilder- 
ment, and bitterness everywhere ! They 
would have mutinied and fled if they could 
have seen anything to be gained by such a 
course. But there was no place to flee to. 
The wilderness and the long dreary trail 
that ended in bondage lay behind them, 
and the hosts of Amalek stood threatening 
their advance. 

And all the reproach and obloquy fell 
upon Moses. He had brought them into 
this perilous situation. He must get them 
out of it, or else he and his God would be- 
come a by-word and a derision for all gen- 
erations. 

It requires a great emergency to reveal 
a great man. I do not think any of the 
traditions and legends about Moses show 



The Uplifted Hands 5 

him to better advantage than in what Jo- 
sephus has to say about the way he man- 
aged in this remarkable crisis. All around 
that trembling, heart-sick, disordered camp 
of the Israelites the mysterious enemy was 
forming in what they supposed were count- 
less numbers, well armed, well fed, well 
clothed, — vulture-like, only waiting for the 
word to settle down in clouds upon them 
and leave not so much as a parchment to 
tell that they had ever existed. So it 
must have seemed as they fanned each 
other's fears into flames of dread and panic. 

And it was right then and there that 
the great man, — the Providential man, — 
as Carlyle calls him, proved himself. 

First of all, Moses sees that the work of 
preparation must begin at the very centre. 
Their souls must be put in order. That is 
the first great necessity. It is life they 
need more than anything else. He must 
give them new vitality. That is what the 
great man always does first. He knows 



6 The Uplifted Ha7ids 

how to do it. He holds the key of Life's 
great source. That is why he is a man of 
God. Manna is good, water from Horeb 
refreshing, but now — the greatest miracle 
of all ! — these hungry, disheartened, quak- 
ing souls must be filled with life ! Nothing 
genuine that has come to us under the 
names of Faith-cure, Mental Healing, Chris- 
tian Science, or Metaphysical Treatment 
but Moses brought it to bear upon his 
languishing followers. When all was as 
black and melancholy as despair itself, he 
— - the great man that he was — began by 
being cheerful. Then he gathered around 
him his best men, — the men of authority, 
out of whose personalities vital energies 
were constantly passing upon those be- 
neath them. And he first revealed them 
unto themselves, showed them how they 
were, really, men, — men of life and powder 
and authority. How they were not mere 
reeds to be twisted and broken by night 
winds. He encouraged them, strengthened 



The Uplifted Hands 7 

their hearts by ten beats a minute. Then 
he called in others of the camp, and still 
others ; and the fire, which began as a 
mere spark in his own breast, gathered 
warmth and communicated itself to others, 
and so on until the whole camp was all in 
a glowing flame of enthusiasm, and young 
men looked about them and found arms 
that they knew not of. Broken swords 
were good enough in such hands. Old, 
tarnished, and rusty knives, and bows and 
arrows, gathered resilience and directness, 
their ragged garments clothed them hke 
coats of mail. Josephus tells us how Moses 
made them to see that their own army 
was "numerous, wanting nothing, neither 
weapons nor money nor provisions nor 
such other conveniences as, when men are 
in possession of, they fight undauntedly ; 
and they are to judge themselves to have 
all these advantages in the Divine assist- 
ance." 

And then, when they became exalted 



8 The Uplifted Hmids 

and intrepid and ready for any sort of fray, 
— one man of them equal to any ten of the 
enemy, — he bids them look and see ! The 
enemy's army is small, unarmed, weak, 
and such as want those conveniences which 
they know must be wanted, when it is God's 
will that they shall be beaten." 

So the people," says Josephus, "were 
elevated in their minds." And then their 
unconquerable leader tells the young men 
to obey their elders, and the elders to 
hearken unto their leaders. All night 
and all the next day he talks, and plans 
and labors, until his poor, disheartened 
camp is organized and equipped. And 
every man of them has his place and is 
sworn to military obedience, and a guard is 
put over the women and the children, and 
over them all is placed a great and good 
commander, — **one that was," we are 
told, "of great courage, and patient to 
undergo labors," — Joshua, the man of war 
who will one day find his place in history 



The Uplifted Hands , 9 

among the world's great conquerors. A 
man who was of great abiHties to under- 
stand, and to speak what was proper, and 
very serious in the worship of God." 

And then, when the morning came, 
Moses told Joshua — to whom he had 
given advice all night — to go forth and 
gain glory ! and all that great army, which 
he had created out of the very dust and 
had breathed his life into it, he exhorted 
and cheered, until not a man of them but 
fairly chafed to be let loose upon the god- 
less hosts that were swarming on the plains 
below. 

And then it was agreed that the Hebrew 
army, unused to military methods, poorly 
armed, poorly protected, — with little to 
give them confidence but their faith in 
Moses, and the power of his matchless 
spirit, — should have him ever in full view. 
On the high rock he would stand with up- 
lifted hands, and when they were hard 
pressed they should thus be reminded that 



lO The Uplifted Hands 

God was fighting with them, and that vic- 
tory was sure, because God was sure. 

And then comes the pitiful side of the 
picture which forms my text, the crucial 
point in the old legend. That motley 
horde of Israelites little realize what all 
this courage and zeal — this great flood of 
new life coursing through their hearts — 
has cost their leader. For, when the 
battle waxes and those hosts of Amalek 
swarm around the Hebrew army, the great 
man's strength itself gives way. Already 
he has been their Atlas. He has carried 
their world unaided upon his neck. But 
now he can scarcely stand. His uplifted 
hands fall helplessly at his side, and the 
conflict goes against him. He gathers his 
wasted energies, and, as his hands are pain- 
fully uplifted again, the Israelites take 
courage and storm the enemy. Then, as 
his hands fall again, the hosts of Amalek 
prevail. 



The Uplifted Hands ii 

The people need the Providential man. 
They are but slaves and cowards without 
him. But the time comes when the Prov- 
idential man must have the people. The 
great life-energy which he has given to 
them must come surging back in some 
magnificent sympathy, else even he must 
fail. It was just at this crisis that there 
were those who could come to the rescue. 

" But Moses' hands were heavy ; and 
they took a stone, and put it under him, 
and he sat thereon ; and Aaron and Hur 
stayed up his hands, the one on the one 
side, and the other on the other side ; and 
his hands were steady until the going down 
of the sun." 

Thus all through that long day when the 
battle was on and Israel fought against an 
overwhelming army, whenever their spirits 
failed and fears beset them, they could see 
through the dust and uproar those uplifted 
hands — the symbol of a more than human 
power — ever recalling them to their great- 



12 The Uplifted Hands 

ness in the sight of God. And, when the 
sun went down, they were conquerors. 
The land was theirs. And that complain- 
ing, heart-sick, thirsty, and cowardly host 
found itself transformed into an invincible 
army before which the kings of Arabia 
could not prevail. 

It matters little to us, in this far-away 
age, what may have been the historical 
facts upon which the record is based. 
What concerns us most of all is the fact 
that this is the statement of a spiritual 
victory. It was a battle won by a superior 
soul, infusing itself into the lives of the 
wretched. It was a conquest of life over 
the votaries of superstition and fear. 

No man, no nation, no church, can pre- 
vail without the recognition of the Uncon- 
querable ! It seems Hebraic to say it, but 
God must be the inspiration of every suc- 
cessful enterprise in this world. Even ap- 
parent victory is not victory at all, in the 



The Uplifted Hands 13 

end, if that victory is not ordered, timed, 
and executed in the recognition of that 
righteousness of law which Hes at the 
foundation of every positive creation. 

Even Moses did not depend upon Je- 
hovah to answer his prayers. The soul 
that he invoked was given. The life, 
without which the Hebrew camp was but 
a miserable rabble of complaining, fault- 
finding, helpless emigrants, was sent — 
from who knows where ? — freely down 
through the great mind and spirit of the 
Law-giver. But that shadowy man of 
the past knew that even that life was use- 
less unless directed, God favors law, or- 
ganization, order, obedience, loyalty, and 
patience. Enthusiasm is but a wayward 
and reckless insanity without deliberation. 
God's ways are along the lines of reason, 
righteousness, and precision. There is no 
chance, no hap-hazard, no easy-go-lucky 
path to true victory. He decrees leader- 
ship and loyalty, system and intelligence, 



14 The Uplifted Hands 

and by these signs his triumphs are always 
won. If it be material conquest, it must 
be mathematical. If it be moral conquest, 
it must be righteous. If it be spiritual 
conquest, it must be holy. There is no 
battle to the strong — if it is brute strength 
and nothing more. 

The first thing this great leader did 
was to tell this people that God reigned, 
that no cause and no nation was fit to 
exist which did not see in God a reason for 
existing, that even so poor a people as 
they were invincible if God and his laws 
became their inspiration. 

The next thing he did was to harmon- 
ize the discordant and disordered elements 
of the Hebrew camp. He caused a com- 
plete fusion of its parts. Every elder 
knew his leader, every man knew his 
place. 

The third thing he did was to generate 
a m.agnetic force, — to send forth, out of 
his own great abundance of life and faith, 



The Uplifted Hands 15 

a new energy into the hearts of the people 
until every man of them became equal to 
any dozen of the eager but selfish, self-seek- 
ing, jealous, and suspicious enemy. 

No power to re-create conditions has its 
source in humanity. The one condition of 
final success in this world is a religious 
condition. It consists in a recognition of 
God as the Reservoir of all power. On 
this ground we are justified in demanding 
the exercise of essential religion in all the 
practical concerns of life. 

We are bound to say, in illustration of 
this fundamental principle : Mr. Merchant, 
can you do business without mathematics 1 
Mr. Manufacturer, can you combine crude 
materials without mechanical precision, — 
a perfect adaptation of means to ends 1 
Mr. Lawyer, can you find equity and jus- 
tice without an exact code of morality .^^ 
Mr. Spiritual Adviser, can you give life 
without knowing where to find it 1 But 
mathematics came into this world when the 



1 6 The Uplifted Hands 

beginning came. Units, and combinations 
of units according to perfect relations, 
belong to God. Mathematics belong to 
him. If you are using mathematics, and 
by that use you make a fortune, then why 
not give credit to Him whose property 
creates your success ? Why not become a 
God-recognizing — that is, a truly religious 
— merchant } If by a skilful employment 
of God's own modes of motion a man trans- 
forms crude material into the finished prod- 
uct, why not become a God-recognizing — 
a religious — manufacturer } The idea of 
legal or social or political justice did not 
originate with any man, any more than it 
originated with the bee or the ant which 
applies it in the last detail of community 
life : it originated with God. Why, then, 
should not he who gets his living with it 
become a God-recognizing — a religious — 
lawyer or citizen ? 

In its modern character, Moses, of 
course, never heard of such a thing as 



The Uplifted Hands 17 

science. And yet in this victory which he 
gained over Amalek he made use of soci- 
ology, mihtary tactics, psychology, and 
metaphysical healing. But he was a great 
enough man to acknowledge the fact that 
the methods he adopted were not his own. 
He practically did say what a greater than 
he confessed a thousand years after, — " Of 
mine own self I can do nothing." For he 
insisted that every last man of those He- 
brews should know but one Authority and 
Law-giver, and feel the force of that recog- 
nition every time he should glance up to 
that great rock whereon he stood with up- 
lifted hands. 

Sometimes, when we take a superficial 
survey of this world, we are compelled to 
think only of our incapacities. There are 
so many promises that never come to fulfil- 
ment, so many weaknesses, flaws, and 
failures, that we lose heart. The hosts of 
iniquity and sin and sorrow are so well 



1 8 The Uplifted Hands 

orgainized, so bold and fearless ! There are 
so many battles to be fought against the 
visible enemies that swarm into the low 
plains of the world ; there are so many 
awful conflicts to encounter in the wilder- 
nesses of the heart. And, when we place 
over against the enemy's efficiency our 
own inefficiency and utter lack, we are 
overwhelmed ! 

Then we must draw near to and touch 
our Providential men, — Socrates, with his 
calm but triumphant reason ; Jesus, whose 
brave confidence gave the worst of worlds 
a new and wonderful life ; Saint Francis, 
with his magnificent self-surrender ; Lu- 
ther, with a faith that shamed death itself. 
In their light we see light, and are made to 
feel that the hardest ages, the cruellest 
and most vicious, are brought by the men 
whose hands are lifted up back to sanity 
and peace. By what they have done and 
said we partake of their life, are remagnet- 
ized by their victorious and hopeful souls. 



The Uplifted Hands 19 

They cheer us. Our old weapons gain 
new strength. Our incapacities are for- 
gotten in the thought that God himself is 
the giver of every faculty. Commonplace 
powers and virtues that we had never fully 
valued, the homely qualities that we had 
never honored, prove sufficient and enough 
when given the divine direction. 

You know how matters stood with 
Oliver Cromwell, in those dark days at 
the beginning of the Reformation, when 
he was trying to induce John Hampden to 
form more and better regiments } 

"Your troops,'' said he to Hampden, 
"are most of them old, decayed serving- 
men and tapsters and such kind of fellows. 
You must get men of spirit^' said he, 
" and of a spirit that is likely to go on as 
far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be 
beaten still." And, when he was permitted 
to raise troops, he said they were ^* men as 
had the fear of God before them, as made 
some conscience of what they did, and from 



20 The Uplifted Ha7ids 

that day forward, I must say to you, they 
were never beaten, and wherever they 
were engaged against the enemy, they 
beat continually." 

When individuals, families, communities, 
or nations, lose sight of the principle in- 
volved here, they degenerate, lose their 
magnetic power, become lifeless and in- 
different. Strike them, they ring hollow 
upon the substance of their souls ! 

We are all dependent upon Providential 
men. They uncover the sources of life. 
They win us back from our degeneracies, 
and show us what a sublime thing is man- 
hood and womanhood ! They reveal to us 
what a mean and selfish thing it is to 
accept this life, and use all these means 
to gratify our desire for happiness and 
peace, without acknowledging our indebted- 
ness. 

But they do a great deal more than that. 
Moses did more than that for the Israelites. 
He convinced them that they were Provi- 



The Uplifted Hands 21 

dential people ! Every young man who 
that day took an old, broken sword in his 
hands — to win with it — did it as the son 
of a king. He was a slave no longer, a 
wretched fault-finder, a mischief-maker, a 
puny, trembling, grumbling coward no 
longer. The divine hiatus had been made 
in the darkness of his soul^ and he became 
a man, — a man of God ! 

There is not one of us who does not 
have his providential day. And when that 
day comes and we feel stronger, and eager 
to do something to prove the sublimity of 
true manhood or womanhood, then is the 
moment when we can give back to others 
some of the life that has been given to us ! 
When the battle wages and a thousand 
enemies — in politics, in social relations, in 
religious interests — are thrusting at the 
vitals of State or Church, then it is that 
we can — in some way, however slight, — 
hold up those hands whose tireless eleva-* 
tion means so much to the world. 



22 The Uplifted Hands 

We think of Abraham Lincoln as a 
Providential man. In his first administra- 
tion how he stood, like Moses, on the rock 
of National Unity, with hands always lifted 
toward the skies of American integrity and 
righteousness ! But who knows how much 
it cost him ! Out of his great soul the 
nation was reborn. His fearless trust in 
that God that never fails became infectious, 
and men who had never made one religious 
profession in their lives trusted in God to 
save this country because Father Abra- 
ham stood there, like the great Law-giver 
of old, his hands uplifted in the name of 
righteousness and peace. 

But there came a day when Abraham 
Lincoln — the Providential man — needed 
the people. And then it was that they 
could give back to him some of that mighty 
power which he had given to them. His 
hands were sinking from sheer exhaustion 
and the enemy seemed to prevail. And 
it was then that my text was fulfilled in 



The Uplifted Hands 23 

his great life. He groaned, and in his 
loneHness felt as one felt when he cried 
out, " What ! canst thou not watch with 
me one hour ? 

But the people heard ; and when, from 
one end of the North to the other, good 
men and true, by their American right 
and privilege, placed under him again the 
Presidential chair, and stayed his hands 
with their overwhelming approval of his 
course, then did they, indeed, prove worthy 
in the hour of trial. 

In smaller ways, in the quiet walks 
of life, in our homes, in our town, in our 
church, there are those who in their re- 
lations to us are providential. How many 
uplifting thoughts, how much of nobleness, 
of trust in ourselves, of faith in God, of 
constant hope and the sense of safety, we 
have derived from them, no one can ever 
say ! But that is only half the battle. 
The pitiful hour comes, sooner or later. 



24 The Uplifted Hands 

— to Abraham, Moses, Jesus ; to Luther, 
Cromwell, Washington, Lhicoln ; to father, 
mother ; to our friends, tried and true, — 
when, but for us common people, their 
hands hang lifeless at their sides. It is our 
providential hour. In it we become great 
after the manner of providential forces. 
Get faith and a joyous trust in the benefi- 
cence of both life and death, and a happy 
and holy familiarity with the soul, that you 
may give them forth. There is a main 
current of life sweeping down through the 
centuries from resurrection to resurrection, 
forever building up and repairing and trans- 
forming to the utmost unit of matter and 
of spirit. In that main current of life there 
is no defeat, no loss, no dissolution. He 
who receives it can give it. Human wants 
or mortal necessities diminish as we, in the 
cheerful spirit of that brave old leader 
in Israel, become providential to those 
about us. 

" Strengthen ye the weak hands and 



The Uplifted Hands 25 

confirm the feeble knees. Say to them 
that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear 
not ! " 

Then, surely, their hands shall be steady 
until the going down of the sun. 



II. 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

" Again, therefore, Jesus spake unto them, saying, 
I am the light of the world: he that foUoweth me 
shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the 
light of life.** — John viii. 12. 

A SLIGHT comparison of passages 
shows us that Jesus was now attend- 
ing the Feast of Tabernacles, and that he 
was using the two great incidents of that 
feast as texts from which he was teaching 
the spiritual significance of his own life and 
words. A little while before this he had 
said, If any man thirst, let him come unto 
me and drink.'* And now he speaks of 
himself as " the light of the world/* 

He is using these expressions for this 
reason : The Feast of Tabernacles, what- 
ever it may have become in the time of 
Jesus, was originally designed to keep alive 
the traditions of the Jewish nation, and to 



The Light of the World 27 

afford a kind of object-lesson which should 
give every person a practical experience of 
what Israel had passed through in the long 
and perilous journey from the bondage of 
Egypt to the blessings of Canaan. 

The people came from all parts of Pales- 
tine and camped in tents outside the walls 
of the holy city. They were to live in 
tents and in the open air, as their fathers 
had done on their way to the promised 
land. According to their traditions the 
two greatest events, or at least two of 
the greatest events that happened during 
that pilgrimage, were the getting of water 
for the famishing hordes from the rock 
struck by the wand of Moses and the 
guidance of the people by the pillar of 
smoke by day and fire by night. These 
two events were symbolically or pictorially 
reproduced at this Feast of Tabernacles. 
For the first the priests in long procession 
marched to the pool of Siloam and filled 
with water a golden pitcher, and then, 



28 The Uplifted Hands 

marching solemnly to the temple, poured 
it out before the Lord upon the altar. 

This custom on this last day of the 
feast, when the minds of the people were 
deeply impressed by this ceremony, fur- 
nished Jesus with a text for a sermon in 
which he used the words : If any man 
thirst, let him come unto me and drink. 
He that believeth on me, as the scripture 
hath said, from within him shall flow rivers 
of living water.'' 

For the second event there was lighted 
at night, in the court of the women which 
was not roofed over, a great candelabra. 
The people about the city and standing at 
the doors of their tents at night could see 
the light streaming up into the darkness, 
and thus be pictorially taught concerning 
the pillar of fire which had led their 
fathers through the wilderness. 

This custom also furnished Jesus with 
a text as he stood and preached to the 
people who had come up to the feast. 



The Light of the World 29 

And in this sermon he used the words 
around which we will gather our thought 
to-day : Again, therefore, Jesus spake 
unto them, saying, I am the light of the 
world : he that followeth me shall not walk 
in darkness, but shall have the light of 
life." What the pillar of fire had been to 
the forefathers, so, spiritually speaking, 
Jesus was, a pillar of light leading the 
world to higher truth and higher living. 

There are at least three ways in which 
Jesus was the light of life, — as a teacher, 
as a revealer, and as an inspirer. 

(i) As a teacher, we do not think of 
Jesus as we do of Plato, of Aristotle, or 
of Plutarch. He was not an historian, he 
was not a scientist, he was not a philoso- 
pher, and he was not even a moralist in 
the sense that Plutarch was, as a writer of 
essays and treatises upon ethics and po- 
litical economy. Jesus did not add any- 
thing to the information of the world upon 
the subject of astronomy. It is highly 



30 The Uplifted Hands 

probable that he believed the earth was 
flat and that the sun passed daily around 
it. He was not a geologist, and in all 
probability shared with his contemporaries 
in the belief that Sodom and Gomorrah 
had been destroyed because of their unfit- 
ness to exist rather than because of any 
convulsive conditions of the earth's crust 
in the region around the Dead Sea. 
There are ever so many ways in which 
Jesus was not a teacher. He was not a 
graduate from any school ; and his own 
friends and neighbors who had evidently 
known him all his life wondered, dumb 
and jealous as some of them were, because 
of what he taught and how he taught. 

No teacher is anything more than a 
transmitter. Our thoughts are only God's 
thoughts, and the abihty with which one 
can grasp and express and interpret the 
thoughts of God marks his ability as a 
teacher. The universities are the great 
repositories of God's thoughts, sometimes 



The Light of the World 31 

clearly marked and placed plainly before 
the pupil, sometimes obscured, misnamed, 
misunderstood, and erroneously expressed. 
And the vast visible world, too, is filled 
with God's thoughts, and the man who has 
the genius to understand these thoughts 
first-hand, to cull them straight from the 
manuscripts of Nature, is the original, the 
artistic, and phenomenal teacher ; and, uni- 
versity or no university, if his soul be not 
blurred and tarnished by sin, he holds as 
Bryant did, when in his youth he wrote 
Thanatopsis," communion in the " love of 
nature" with God's ^Wisible thoughts." 

So, to some extent, what happened to 
Jesus may happen to our own boys and 
girls, and we may misjudge and under or 
over estimate them, because, in judging 
them by their diplomas or the degrees they 
have taken at the second-hand thoughts 
of the universities, we may entirely ignore 
their ability and their experience in grasp- 
ing, first-hand, the thoughts of God in the 



32 The Uplifted Hands 

visible world about them and the soul-life 
within them. 

Of all men, Jesus was misjudged in this 
way. Not having learned letters y — 
another name for the second-hand thoughts 
of the schools, — they, of course, saw no pos- 
sibility of his being a teacher. But, for all 
that, he was a teacher — and the Light 
of the world as a teacher. He was not 
a teacher in the sense of a mere parrot- 
like repeater of other men's thoughts, but 
in the sense of the prophet and poet, as 
one who had spent so many years in the 
consciousness of God that this world was 
literally teeming with the messages that 
God wanted him to put in words for the 
benefit of others. How little waste ma- 
terial there is in his teachings ! Take 
your scissors and go through the Sermon 
on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the few re- 
ported parables of his that have come 
down to us, — in fact, go through every- 
thing that is fairly well authenticated that 



The Light of the World 33 

he said about human beings and the way 
they ought to Hve, and what they ought 
to strive for, and the purpose and prom- 
ises of their existence, — and how much of 
it could you cut out without sustaining a 
real and genuine sense of loss and imper- 
fection ? 

Try any of the great classic teachers. 
Try Plato in the same way. Page after 
page of mere triviality, of mere worthless 
padding, you can dispense with. The 
Greek poets and the historians and essay- 
ists, like Plato, have taught us marvellous 
things. But they are like amethysts im- 
bedded in a hundred times their bulk of 
mere useless conglomerate. The Sacred 
Books of the East, the Koran and the Old 
Testament, may be treated in the same 
way with similar results. 

As a teacher, Jesus was a light of the 
world because he gathered up and stated 
those laws of life which, we are learning 
every day, are the only safe laws of life to 



34 The Uplifted Hands 

follow We will experiment with every- 
thing else. We will return an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth until havoc 
and destruction lie all about us ! And 
then we shall begin to realize that it had 
been wiser to return good for evil. We 
will turn religion into a great pageantry with 
all manner of robes and jewels and images 
and intonations and tawdry symbols. We 
will try it that way until half the world 
finds out that the other half cannot think 
of God apart from a piece of wood or 
stone or a vestment. Then it will dawn 
upon us that the better way would have 
been to teach that God is Spirit, seeth in 
secret, is not worshipped by the art and de- 
vice of man, but in the secret — the simple, 
natural, secret — place of the inner, personal 
life. The world will employ violence to 
prove whether Jesus was wrong about the 
destruction of human life. Nation will rise 
up against nation, wars and rumors of wars 
will harass and horrify and torture half 



The Light of the World 35 

the world. And war will be tried until 
the great nations can hurl a thousand 
strong young men into eternity as easily 
as a man can toss a penny into the street, 
until one great nation in the attempt to 
destroy another great nation shall sud- 
denly realize that both nations are being 
blotted out and utterly ruined — in body, 
in morals, and in. the ability to exist. 
Then it will become apparent that Jesus, 
as a teacher, taught the only safe course, 
that of peace, of rational discussion and 
fraternal co-operation. 

How he obtained his information matters 
but very little to us. That he caught, 
held, and proclaimed the great principles 
of human well-being is a fact that is be- 
coming more and more apparent every day 
that the sun rises. 

(2) Jesus was the Light of the World 
as a revealer. There is a difference be- 
tween a teacher and a revealer. A teacher 
gathers together the thoughts and facts of 



36 The Uplifted Hands 

the world, makes them his own, and then 
by purely intellectual processes turns the 
same thoughts and facts over to others. 
A revealer simply makes it possible for 
others to see what was before hidden. 
Jesus often seemed quite aware that he 
was speaking as a revealer. In most of 
his parables he presents pictures. Those 
who are gathered abont him see those pict- 
ures, and at once have a sort of visual dem- 
onstration of existing realities that they 
never quite saw before. There were lilies 
of the field all about them ; but, when Jesus 
called attention to them, they were revealed 
to them in a new and unfamiliar light. In 
most of those places where Jesus says, 

He that hath ears to hear " or having 
"eyes to see," he is a revealer. 

Do you know the story of Giotto, the 
great Italian genius who gave character 
and impulse to Italian art and architecture ? 

His followers for generations almost wor- 
shipped him. They marvelled at his 



The Light of the World 37 

power and wondered what kind of a man 
he was. How did he look ? They knew 
that at one time a portrait had been made 
of him, but where it was no one could tell. 
It had long since disappeared, and the feat- 
ures of the great founder of Italian art re- 
mained a mystery. At last a student 
heard that far away on a farm in the 
country and in a stable there was some 
sort of a portrait. He suspected what its 
character might be, and hastened to the 
place. He cleared away the hay and the 
dust and the chaff that covered it. He 
swept down generations of cobwebs and 
worked away the whitewash. And then 
appeared the beautiful face of Giotto, the 
great artist, — the only true and authentic 
portrait in existence. 

This student was the revealer of a great 
treasure. And what he did to bring to 
Hght the hidden features of Giotto, Jesus 
did as the revealer of the hidden and ob- 
scured lineaments of God. What dust 



38 The Uplifted Hands 

and chaff had collected on those features ! 
What endless cobwebs of speculation had 
veiled his face for years ! How hard it 
had become to find him, to know of his 
ways, his purposes, and his love ! God 
was so far away from those people that 
there was some excuse for them when they 
employed priests and mediators to inter- 
cede with so distant and austere and un- 
sympathetic a being. To some he was a 
stern and merciless judge, and he needed, 
they thought, to be approached in the 
posture of the most abject humiliation. 
They could not see his face. They did 
not dare to utter his real name. Only the 
sanctified ones who had been clothed with 
the authority of a great sacerdotal system 
could presume to offer up to him the mis- 
erable prayers of the miserable people who 
had never dreamed of the actual value of a 
human soul. Some thought of God as an 
Oriental king, served by a throng of offi- 
cials ; one who lived apart from human 



The Light of the World 39 

beings, and could be approached only- 
through endless functionaries. They could 
never hope to see his face, or speak to him 
directly, or account themselves as being of 
any significance to him. The Greeks 
called him the Sky-Father, — far, far away 
beyond the ken of humanity, reached only 
by offerings slain by thousands, moved to 
favor their armies only by some great sac- 
rifice, and hardly conscious of the life of 
the individual. 

That was the way people thought of 
God. Hidden ; vanished^ since those early 
days when he had walked with their old 
saints,— Abraham, Enoch, Noah ; lost in 
the immensities of space, or in the intermi- 
nable temple service, or veiled in the mys- 
terious smoke that rose from burning 
incense, mystified and clouded by the 
speculations and hair-splittings of the 
scribes, — in their numberless formulas and 
their set and stilted prayers. Where was 
he now.? Who had seen him'.? Would he 



40 The Uplifted Hands 

come among men again ? Would deaf 
people, who could not hear the prayers of 
their priests ; would blind people, who 
could not see the smoke of the sacrifice ; 
would suffering people, disappointed people 
who had no heart for anything; would 
poor people who could not pay for their 
prayers, and stupid and foolish and crazy 
people who had no minds to follow the 
directions of the elders, — would there ever 
be any chance for these people to have 
God, or have any hope of his interest in 
them ? Those were the practical questions 
that the masses were asking. Now, just 
as in the case of Giotto's portrait, there 
was a feeling that common people had once 
seen or at least communed with God. 
Elijah and Samuel and the prophets had 
come very near him in all sorts of places, — 
among the mountains, in the courts of 
kings, in widows' houses, by the banks of 
Jordan, in the lonely desert. And they 
remembered that men once knew how he 



The Light of the World 41 

looked, and they wondered what kind of a 
being he could be. 

With what perfect faith and in what a 
magnificent heroism Jesus cleared away 
the rubbish of centuries, and by his in- 
comparable insight restored the features 
of the lost God of the whole world to the 
minds and hearts of men ! The hay and 
dust and cobwebs and the whitewash were 
swept away by the sheer simplicity of his 
uncorrupted soul. And the face of a Father 
of every man, woman, and child that lived 
began to appear, — they the spirit of his 
spirit, dear to him as the apple of the eye, as 
his own life, one whose gentleness was equal 
to his power, and whose love was as great 
as his justice. No child so young that he 
could not draw nigh to him, no man so low 
in human society that he could not find in 
God his best friend. No event so hard to 
bear but it could be understood as some- 
how fitting in with a beneficent order of 
life, where not an atom of being shall ever 



42 The Uplifted Hands 

be allowed to be lost. It was too great a 
change, too wonderful a revelation, to be 
accepted all at once. But a few have seen 
what he revealed, and we may hope that 
in God's good time the pure in heart the 
world over may see the image of his face 
in the purposes and conduct of an illumi- 
nated humanity. 

(3) And then, too, Jesus was the Light 
of the World as an inspirer. This point 
scarcely needs elaboration. Jesus was not 
a mere entertainer. He was not a sensa- 
tionalist. He did not resort to tricks and 
expedients to attract the people. That he 
stirred and thrilled those who heard him is 
plain enough from the wonder and the awe 
which his presence and his words produced. 
But the people, when they heard him 
preach, did not go away thinking of the 
way he said things so much as they did 
feeling that there was something for them 
to do. The story is told of Cicero that his 
hearers went away praising him and his 



The Light of the World 43 

orations, saying, What a beautiful oration ! 
But, when they went to hear Demosthenes, 
they went away apparently forgetting the 
orator and oration, and shouting, Let's 
go fight the Thracians ! " 

In a spiritual sense this must have been 
an illustration of Jesus' power. He in- 
spired men to action. As soon as his few 
short years of work were over, he suddenly 
had a thousand resurrections. The 
works that I do," said he, " shall ye do 
also ; and greater works shall ye do, be- 
cause I go to the Father." People re- 
ceived a new life motive. The monotony of 
the old existence was broken up. There 
is little pleasure in life if we do not have 
something above ourselves to reach, some- 
thing difficult to attain to. Men love to 
see power in other men, and they love to 
exert power themselves. Life is forever 
seeking expression in the accomplishment 
of difficult deeds. That is what gave 
glory and interest to the conquests of 



44 The Uplifted Hands 

Alexander. That was the essence of the 
poems of Homer. All scientific results 
aside, the power to overcome the almost 
insurmountable is what gave such a charm 
to Nansen's brilliant record of his effort to 
reach the North Pole. 

The character of the inspiration which 
Jesus afforded was moral and spiritual. 
To become a hero of the cross, to share 
with him in suffering, to watch with him 
in death, to rise with him in the lives of 
other men, and to save the world from the 
misery and the heartache and the cruelty 
and injustice that overwhelmed it, — that 
was the realm in which he was the light of 
the world as an inspirer. 

We see this same phenomenon every 
day. Some men please us by what they 
say and by what they do, and we go away 
well pleased with them and ourselves. 
Other men come into our presence, and we 
hear them speak and we see their lives, 
and we are made ashamed of ourselves, we 



The Light of the World 45 

are condemned in our own sight, and we 
go away, perhaps vexed with them ; but 
our conscience tells us that until we do 
something, until we translate what we 
know to be right in what is right, we are 
not worthy to condemn them. 

Jesus did not always please. Men went 
away after hearing him sorrowful, indig- 
nant, crest-fallen ! He did not condemn 
them, but after hearing him they con- 
demned themselves. They began to see 
the littleness and the selfishness and the 
inferiority of their own lives, and wondered 
what they could do about it. And thus it 
was that the torch of his power was 
handed on from him to his disciples, from 
them to others, until millions have tried 
honestly and patiently to do as he taught. 

" I am the light of the world : he that 
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, 
but shall have the light of life." 

I am glad he did not say that our pos- 
session of the light of life depended upon 



46 The Uplifted Hands 

our walking with him, overtaking him on 
the road of wisdom, large-mindedness, toler- 
ation, patience, forgiveness, spiritual power. 

Most of us can only follow, and follow 
a great way off. But follow we certainly 
can ! Like children, we must waste time 
and strength in side paths, in forgetfulness 
and wanderings. But darkness always 
closes in when the true way is abandoned. 
Our sympathies wane, our appreciation of 
the sanctity of life, our interest in philan- 
thropic and ennobling enterprises weakens, 
when we turn aside from our highest and 
our best knowledge. Ours should be the 
light of life. It should glorify the brief 
journey we are making here. It should 
bring us the power of comforting others in 
every tribulation. It should take away our 
love of sin, and give us a power of holiness 
in which alone there is safety and peace. 

Gladstone once said : I care not to ask 
if there be dregs or tatters of human life 
such as can escape from the description 



The Light of the World 47 

and boundary of morals. I submit that 
duty is a power which rises with us in the 
morning, and goes to rest with us at night. 
It is coextensive with the action of our in- 
teUigence. It is the shadow which cleaves 
to us, go where we will, and which only 
leaves us when we leave the light of life.*' 
And this sense of duty, the power within 
us to which Gladstone refers, is nothing 
more nor less than God's witness of himself 
within us, our light of life, — only a rush 
light, the faint candle ray, the lightning 
flame in some, — but the highest proof 
within us that God exists and that we exist 
as his children. 

" I see in him both God and man, 
He man and God in me ; 
I quench his thirst, and he in turn 
Helps my necessity." 

There is no flickering taper of a human 
soul but it may be in its degree what 
Jesus was in a far greater degree, — the 
light of life in its own sphere. In the 



48 The Uplifted Hands 

black night all sorts of beacons may be 
burning. It may be the pitch-knot, the 
smoking flax in its crucible of oil, the 
candle, the coal-oil lamp, the dazzling 
electric light ; but in some terms or other 
they are all related to and derive their 
origin and power from that mighty sun 
whose flames burst upon the primeval 
darkness when the voice of God said, 
" Let there be light." 

In this Christian world, trace the growth 
of any noble and philanthropic power and 
impulse as you will, in some terms or other 
you shall find it related to and made sig- 
nificant by that central orb of life and 
light which forced civilized man to meas- 
ure time by its coming. And we, the 
humblest and perhaps the least significant 
of his followers, may, in the highest spirit- 
ual sense, be teachers, revealers, and in- 
spirers as we gather into ourselves his 
power and acquaint ourselves with the 
habit and rhythm of his life. 



III. 



THE APPROVED WORKMAN. 

" A workman that needeth not to be ashamed." 
2 Timothy ii. 15. 

IT is sometimes insinuated that only in 
climates that are more or less heroic 
with extremes of heat and cold can we ex- 
pect to find a people who are industrious, 
thrifty, energetic, and thorough. The 
thriftless, careless, indolent characteristics 
of people living in semi-tropical zones are 
attributed to the enervating effects of the 
prevailing temperature. Off-hand state- 
ments of this kind are made and received 
without dissent or question, and a sort of 
acquiescence in the decrees of longitude and 
latitude is taken for granted. No doubt 
there is much force in this natural shifting 
of human responsibility upon the weather. 
Changes of climate involve corresponding 



50 The Uplifted Hands 

changes in the flora and fauna of the vari- 
ous regions on the surface of the earth, 
and undoubtedly human nature cannot be 
wholly exempted from the general rule. 
Notwithstanding this general belief, how- 
ever, it may be well to remember that 
most of the old models of thrift and enter- 
prise are found in countries where there 
are no winters worth mentioning and 
where the common people have lived for 
many centuries without superfluous cloth- 
ing. Jerusalem lies on the same parallel 
as Savannah and the Bermuda Islands, and 
the Temple of Jerusalem was, in its day, 
an example of exquisite workmanship. 
And it was in this semi-tropical climate of 
Palestine that those wonderful precepts 
about the faithful steward, the industrious 
and enterprising husbandman, and the 
"workman that needeth not to be 
ashamed," were inspired. Indeed, the 
Book of Proverbs is a better guide to the 
practical man, or to the young man start- 



The Approved Workman 5 I 

ing out to win a living, than " Poor Richard's 
Almanac " itself. And the constant refer- 
ences to the rewards of honest toil in the 
parables of Jesus and in the letters of the 
apostle Paul show us that those people 
knew, as well as any scion of rugged New 
England, what constituted a manly man or 
a womanly woman. What splendid refer- 
ences to the good, thrifty, honest house- 
holder or housekeeper one may find in 
the Bible ! The fundamental law of the 
land was to labor six days and rest on the 
seventh. 

" Man goeth forth unto his work 
And to his labor until the evening," 

sings the Psalmist. And the old chronicler 
considered it a divine assurance when he 
spoke to the confused, bewildered, and dis- 
couraged Israelites and said, " Be ye strong, 
and let not your hands be slack : for your 
work shall be rewarded." What a pleasant 
passage is that where the seer refers to the 



52 The Uplifted Hands 

good, industrious, clear-hearted, and clear- 
headed housekeeper ! — 

" She considereth a field, and buyeth it : 
With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vine- 
yard. . . . 
She layeth her hands to the distaff, 
And her hands hold the spindle. . . . 
She is not afraid of the snow for her household; 
For all her household are clothed with scarlet. 
Strength and dignity are her clothing ; 
And she laugheth at the time to come." 

With Jesus the man of whom it could 
be said that he had been good and faith- 
ful," having used his powers to the best 
advantage, was the man who, in the very 
nature of things, was to enter into the joys 
of his Lord. The apostles believed that 
any man who did work of any kind was 
honorable ; and it was a constant concession 
that *^the laborer was worthy of his hire." 
The greatest emphasis was laid upon good 
work, — work done in joy, and therefore 
done in thoroughness and precision. It 



The Approved Workman 53 

was a standard of Christian excellence to 
have been '*a workman that needeth not 
to be ashamed/' 

Long before a page of the Bible was 
thought of the great civilization of Upper 
Egypt, — in the latitude of Havana and 
Honolulu, — with Memphis as the capital, 
exhibited an energy and an industry which, 
for its time, must have been as grand as 
anything of the kind in Chicago or New 
York to-day. Long trains of camels came 
thither from all parts of the known world, 
bearing the products of human ingenuity 
and skill ; and to this day the relics of 
palaces, of beautiful gardens, of places of 
worship, and huge monuments to dead 
kings, tend to modify the rather loud con- 
ceits of the twentieth century and the 
prejudices in favor of northern lands. 

Who knows how long ago the Aztecs in 
Mexico were flourishing and carrying on in 
peace a political, social, and industrial civili- 
zation which, for its time, must have re- 



54 The Uplifted Hands 

quired exceptional wisdom, fine technical 
training, and superior skill on the part of 
thousands of the common people ? The 
mere fact that in these old countries there 
are found such enduring monuments, such 
excellent v/orks of art, and such a multi- 
tude of objects disclosing marvellous pa- 
tience and industry, proves beyond question 
that we who have so much to say about our 
modern superiority have no monopoly of 
the text. If the works that men did with 
their hands four thousand years ago remain 
for us to model after in so many instances, 
what remains to be said for the good 
workman of our time ? We may at least 
think of the principle involved in the text 
without any extraordinary degree of pride. 
It is a grand thing to have done something 
with the hand or with the mind that 
speaks for generations and to generations 
to come, representing some thought or 
illustrating the nobler qualities of the artist 
or the artisan. Men live in this way long 



The Approved Workman 55 

after they have passed from mortal sight. 
In this way one generation becomes the 
inspiration and instruction and guidance of 
those that follow. 

Now it is impossible that the apostle 
Paul, in writing to his young friend 
Timothy, had not been impressed by the 
beauty and the strength and the grandeur 
of many a splendid monument of Pagan 
genius and skill. Protected by Perikles, 
that great patron of art and public works, 
Phidias had actually ^*torn the veil from 
Olympus " and revealed the ancient gods 
in all their grandeur. The results of his 
genius were to be found in many places, 
and we are told that " his Zeus exercised 
a lasting influence upon the ancient world, 
as did also his Athene Parthenos. The 
majesty, dignity, and elevated beauty of 
his conceptions gave to his work an ideal, 
poetic character, even in the few instances 
in which he dealt with purely athletic sub- 
jects." For five hundred years before 



56 The Uplifted Ha7ids 

Paul wrote this letter to Timothy great 
architects, artists, and sculptors, supported 
by other great — because careful, pains- 
taking, and obedient — artisans, had carried 
the reputation of Greece to the summit of 
its glory and filled those ancient cities 
through which the apostle was spreading 
the good news of the Christian gospel with 
workmanship which aroused the wonder 
and the admiration of the world. 

The eyes of Paul of Tarsus, we are as- 
sured, were observant ; for many a lesson 
he draws from the great Pagan world 
about him. The gladiatorial contests, the 
athletic games, the administration of au- 
thority, and many other functions of the 
Roman state were not lost upon him ; for 
we find constant reference to them among 
the pages of his epistles. Is it any 
wonder, then, that when he writes this 
letter to his young and ardent follower he 
bids him make of his Christian life a thing 
of beauty, a noble piece of workmanship, 



The Approved Workman 57 

whose influence shall not be confined to 
the few short years of his own mortal life- 
time, but an enduring force, shaping the 
character and determining the quality of 
generations to come ? The works of Phid- 
ias and Praxiteles ministered to the highest 
mortal needs of men : they celebrated the 
divine beauty and strength of the human 
body, they represented all those ideals of 
intellectual and physical excellence which 
for centuries had been identified with the 
Pagan conception of religion. All that 
was noblest in their thoughts of the gods 
and their relations with human beings was 
gathered up in these few centuries just 
before the coming of Christianity, and in- 
directly yielded a marvellous inspiration for 
the building of great public buildings, high- 
ways, bridges, triumphal arches, and thou- 
sands of other objects embodying the 
greatest skill and ingenuity of the age. 

And now it is as if a new era had 
dawned and as if these earnest apostles 



58 The Uplifted Hafids 

were its forerunners. The ancient books 
are closed, and a new revelation is about 
to be made. It is no longer the human 
body, however divine and beautiful its 
ideals may be, it is no longer the cities 
and principalities of the world, however 
great and glorious they may appear, that 
appeal to the new school of artists and 
workmen. 

The time has now come to create illus- 
trations and images of the spiritual life 
whose influence upon the world shall here- 
after be as wonderful as those of the 
great representations of physical glory 
have hitherto been. The ideal of the new 
spiritual human being which is to be 
known and seen is no longer to be repre- 
sented by the Hermes of Praxiteles or the 
Dying Gaul or the beautiful Aphrodite of 
Melos, but one who transcends anything 
yet produced. Up to now Httle, if any- 
thing, has been created by human genius 
which suggests a victory over sickness and 



The Approved Workman 59 

sin and misery and death. Nothing, gets 
beyond the exasperating limitations of this 
world. Nothing proves superior to disso- 
lution and ashes. But now a workman 
appears who proposes another and a higher 
task, and the ideal thus proposed is de- 
scribed as one who sits far above all rule 
and authority and power and dominion and 
every name that is named, not only in this 
world, but also in that which is to come," 
who has *'put all things in subjection 
under his feet, and gave him to be head 
over all things to the church, which is his 
body, the fulness of him that filleth all in 
all." 

Such language, used by any one less 
in earnest than an apostle, would seem 
pompous and grandiloquent. But, taken 
as the description of a spiritual reality 
towards which a great spiritual master had 
set his gaze, it may furnish us with a 
faint notion of the new kind of life which 
was about to supersede the loftiest enthu- 



6o The Uplifted Hands 

siasm of the former age. Thus it is that, 
as workmen, we are summoned to a task 
which Kes upon a higher plane than that 
which confronted those faithful laborers 
who, with chisel in hand, fashioned in 
marble the glorious conceptions of the 
great pre-Christian artists. And we should 
gather something like a chivalrous en- 
thusiasm when we realize that it must be 
upon the exactness and fidelity with which 
we follow the specifications and drawings 
that lie before us that the final work 
depends. I suppose that history would be 
too greatly burdened if all the obedient 
and careful workmen had been recorded 
who have carried into effect the designs of 
their masters. Whenever I look upon a 
reproduction of the Lion of Lucerne, 
first I think of the great designer of it. 
That so sublime a conception could have 
been entertained ! The name of Thor- 
waldsen goes with it as a matter of course, 
and as long as that magnificent representa- 



The Approved Workman 6 1 

tion of the dignified and suffering king of 
beasts lies there in the rock at Lucerne 
the name of Thorwaldsen will retain its 
splendor. But, when I realized that Thor- 
waldsen himself did not lift a mallet nor 
hold a chisel in the working out of this 
remarkable production, somehow I felt that 
some of the glory at least ought to have 
gone to the humble workman who day 
after day and month after month chipped 
away the hard granite with such consum- 
mate faithfulness and skill, and fixed in 
the solid stone those lines in the lion's 
face that so vividly symbolize a strange 
and wonderful look of triumphant defeat, 
and the contempt of a superior victim. It 
was, indeed, something to have originated 
such a conception ; but was it not also an 
achievement of great consequence, and a 
work of which one needed not to be 
ashamed, to have carried out so faithfully 
the original idea ! 

And now you know we have before us 



62 TJie Uplifted Hands 

all the necessary specifications, the direc- 
tions in detail, the models, the drawings, 
and the designs — as, too, the young Tim- 
othy had — for the working out into some- 
thing artistically beautiful, into something 
strong and gi'and, of this life of ours. 
And we are assured all along that what we 
may regard as a mistake in human history 
will not be made in this instance. No 
honest and patient workman will be for- 
gotten. The very constitution of human 
life is such that the rewards of nature are 
forever contemporaneous \vith the work- 
ings of nature. The mere fact that both 
pride and shame are possible, that a sense 
of success outweighs any money considera- 
tion, and a sense of stupid failure and 
mortification cannot be bought off, is proof 
that the person who works out in fidelity, 
into actual practice, the details that have 
been made by the masters, will not lose 
one iota of the honor that belongs to him. 
What a wonderful thing it is that we 



The Approved Workman 63 

can stand off, as it were, and look at our- 
selves and at the work we are making of 
life, just as a sculptor might examine his 
work ! To see if we are forming it accord- 
ing to the rules of good proportion, if we 
are keeping at it patiently and following 
the true drawings ! And how unfortunate 
it is to make the discovery, every now and 
again, that we have forgotten to watch the 
design and have made a sHp with the 
chisel and cut deep into the marble where 
it ought to have been left untouched, or 
have carelessly deformed a feature, or 
made a blemish that can never be repaired ! 
How heavy and troublesome and vexatious 
are our oft-recurring lapses ; and how, 
when through some diabolical impulse a 
man wilfully or criminally defaces or de- 
spoils this object of his workmanship, and 
finally comes to realize what he has done, 
— what a frightful horror takes possession 
of him, just as if, somehow, he had spoiled 
a divine image and a thing intended for 



64 The Uplifted Hands 

immortal uses ! It is this horror that 
nature has pro\dded as a rebuke for mean 
workmanship that has inspired all the hid- 
eous nightmares and hobgoblins connected 
with human conceptions of hell and retri- 
bution. 

What is the secret of good workmanship ? 
How shall we, without tedious effort and 
without wearisome labor, fashion the soul 
so that we need not be ashamed of our 
work ? I met an old friend not long since,' 
over eighty ye,ars of age, whom I knew 
when I was a child. He had always been 
religious ; but in his early life he became 
entangled in many a snare of doctrine and 
false logic, and only within a few years had 
apparently reached a point where this 
world appeared really beautiful in purpose 
and the great hereafter something strangely 
in accord with an all-powerful and all-loving 
Providence. And he said to me, When 
I look back and think how stupid I have 
been in years past, how persistently I have 



The Approved Workman 65 

refused the light, how easily I have lapsed 
into immoralities and low spiritual condi- 
tions, and how frequently I have failed to 
gauge my life by the standards I knew in 
my inmost soul to be the true and noble 
standards, then, at this great age of 
mine, I am heartily ashamed, and find my 
only comfort in the belief that the Al- 
mighty himself understands me, and in a 
divine sympathy will give me ample oppor- 
tunities to do what ought to have been 
done years ago." What, then, is the se- 
cret of the good workman's success ? How 
shall we do this work as workmen who 
needeth not to be ashamed ? 

Have you ever watched an artist at his 
work ? Have you seen him when the spell 
was upon him ? Have you noticed the 
light of his soul kindling the eye and the 
intensity of the enthusiasm that controlled 
him, as a current of electricity might con- 
trol the battery ? Hours pass like moments, 
and even eating and sleeping become tor- 



66 The Uplifted Haiids 

turous interruptions, and nothing in the 
world can divert him from the joy and the 
expectancy that have possession of him. 

In a larger way an infatuation like this 
held the man who wrote this letter to his 
young friend. It was the mad sanity of 
the new life that possessed him. The ideal 
that he was bent on working out into terms 
of the spirit was just as enthralling as any 
ideal that any impassioned artist sought to 
fix in marble or on canvas, or any inventor 
could desire to establish in mechanics, or 
any common workman might seek to fash- 
ion into a true and beautiful reality. 

The secret of the Christian life is en- 
thusiasm ! It is to generate a love for the 
work. It is to gain such a passion for 
the highest forms of thought, the finest 
perceptions of righteousness, and the most 
comprehensive habits of charity, that one 
will know no happiness so great as the joy 
of being obedient to his heavenly vision. 
Back of all his activities there will be the 



The Approved Workman 67 

one supreme, ceaselessly working power. 
Like some orb in the sky obedient to some 
unseen force, he moves straight on in the 
path of a splendid righteousness. For him 
no need of resolutions against this or that 
temptation or folly, for he is in the cur- 
rent of some commanding and compelling 
energy. He is good and true and just and 
wholesome without labor, without remorse, 
without penitence. He is at work in joy ! 
His powers come without bidding. The 
allurements that call lower lives away from 
duty and personal responsibility are not 
apprehended, because there is no chord 
drawn across his soul that can receive or 
respond to the vibrations of such allure- 
ments. 

Religious enthusiasm under many names 
has made man superior to environment and 
climate without and to disappointment 
and sorrow within. No good work is fail- 
ure. And to do good work until we love 
it, to follow our sense of the beautiful until 



68 The Uplifted Hands 

we acquire a passion for it, is to become 
deaf to all meaner voices and blind to all 
sights of shame. Along with the ever- 
increasing knowledge of the world there 
must go this workman's passion to fasten 
that knowledge, in the finest and noblest 
way, to the practical uses of Hfe. Else 
human existence becomes trivial and fussy 
and pedantic. But give it the thrill and 
the throe of a great aspiration, and small 
things fall back into their own realm of in- 
significance, and any work becomes grand. 

The commonest work done under the 
divine spell calls for a divine interpretation. 
Touched by the fires of consecration, the 
meanest task is 'saved from shame, and 
gathers a hue of glory that cannot fade. 



IV. 



THE GIFT OF GOD. 



^' If thou knewest the gift of God." — John iv. lo. 

"IP^HIS story of Jesus meeting the Sa- 



J. maritan woman by Jacob's well has 
appealed to the human mind very much as 
if it were some remarkable painting by one 
of the old masters. It has the force, the 
vividness, and the classic simplicity of such 
a production. All the details inspire sug- 
gestions. Just a general knowledge of the 
spot and the history of the well and the 
scenery of the surrounding country is all 
that is necessary to cause one to imagine 
how the sensitive and serious mind of a 
young prophet would naturally be affected. 
We all know how irresistibly one muses 
and dreams as one looks into deep or run- 
ning water. There is something about it 
which gives vigor and material to the im- 




70 The Uplifted Hands 

agination. Jesus sat thus by the well." 
To how many millions of weary and thirsty 
men and beasts this well of Jacob had af- 
forded comfort ! What wonderful trans- 
formations it had wrought ! When the sun 
had hung low and the quick, oriental night 
was drawing nigh, and all the world 
seemed gloomy and helpless and sad and 
inhospitable, and the travellers were tired 
and footsore, and the camels were restless, 
and the journey seemed so long and merci- 
less that patience grew weak and hope and 
grace and good-will flagged, then how 
welcome was the sight of Jacob's well not 
far away ! And with each deep draught 
of the clear, fresh water how the new life 
was given until even the gathering night 
become glorious and men began to talk 
happily with one another, and psalms were 
sung and laughter went out over the 
fields ! 

And this was the spot where the 
prophets and the patriarchs had halted 



The Gift of God 71 

many a time. All the history of his race 
must have passed this way. Who knows 
but what David had sat where he was now 
sitting, and had looked down into that 
fountain of life-giving water ? And how 
perpetually those waters had been given, — 
century after century, generation after 
generation ! They had never failed, but 
had been given as if by the direct dispen- 
sation of God to every creature, man and 
beast ; to the invading Syrian as well as to 
the most devout Hebrew. Those waters 
were given without reference to and with- 
out respect of persons, or families, or altars, 
or nations, or races, — ever flowing to 
quench the thirst of all who came this 
way. 

Is it strange, then, that this spot be- 
came the place where Jesus was inspired 
to announce the reality of a universal re- 
ligion.? Here was the universal fountain, 
symbol of the universal God ! Here was a 
symbol of the p erpetual and universal flow 



72 The Uplifted Hands 

ing forth of truth and inspiration, ever 
springing forth from the minds of men, fed 
from the inexhaustible sources of divine 
wisdom. Ever as the world grew older 
new interpretations of life to fit the new 
conditions ! From age to age old things 
renewed, vaster realms of power for human 
effort, new life purposes, a new and more 
practical conscience, new joys, and new 
confidences, and ever a renewed love to dis- 
place the old fear. This was the everlast- 
ing genesis of life, — life ever renewed, 
ever expressing itself in wider spheres, 
ever adapting itself to the ever-increasing 
demands of human nature. 

This well of Jacob must have its limita- 
tions. The divine fountains can never cease 
to flow. This water quenches the burning 
thirst of the traveller, but the old weariness 
comes back and the unbearable thirst re- 
turns and must be quenched again. But 
the fountains of spiritual vitality can never 
fail. These are the waters of life; but the 



The Gift of God 73 

inward fountains, fed from the divine 
sources, are of everlasting life, and once 
opened can never cease. He shall not 
thirst again who has once discovered the 
secret place of the divine fountain. 

God is not made with hands. He is not 
confined to times, nor places, nor races. 
*^ Neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusa- 
lem." He is Spirit, and the true worship- 
pers worship the Father in spirit, — not in 
mere form and letter, not in mere custom 
and sacrifice. He comes to those who re- 
ceive him, whether Greek or Egyptian 
whether Samaritan or Jew. 

Such might well have been the thoughts 
that occupied his mind as he sat there in 
the peace and solitude of that memorable 
day. 

And, when the woman of Samaria came 
there to draw water, she came there just 
as the world always goes about its business, 
— faithful enough, but blind ; industrious, 
but deaf. She knew nothing about the 



74 The Uplifted Hands 

thoughts that had been welHng up in the 
mind of Jesus. To her it was true that, if 
any one would worship God, let him go 
where God lived, — to Gerizim ! Here sat 
a Jew. It was not lawful for a Jew to 
have anything to say to a Samaritan. A 
Jew was a Jew, a Samaritan was a Samari- 
tan. The one had one God, and the other 
had another God. The one lived in one 
world, and the other lived in another world. 
They had nothing in common, — so their 
laws and traditions had decreed, — so let it 
be. Her entire conception of life was 
bounded by the restrictions and sanctions 
of her clan. To her there were no uni- 
versal principles governing all life. If 
there was such a thing as justice, it was 
a Samaritan affair. If there was such a 
thing as mercy, it applied simply to her 
own people. Righteousness was a matter 
of ten rules of conduct laid down in the 
Samaritan manuscripts. 

Compare, if you can, these two mental 



The Gift of God 75 

attitudes. The one inspired by the 
bounty of these waters that were con- 
trolled by no arbitrary limitations, no 
race or sect divisions, the other walled 
in by the narrow conventionalities of her 
little neighborhood ; the one realizing 
that the same great needs come to all 
alike, whether Jew or Gentile, and that 
the same sufficient Father-love went out to 
all his children on all the face of the earth 
as freely as these never-failing waters, 
the other wondering how a Jew could be 
thirsty enough to accept water at the 
hands of a Samaritan woman. 

Is it to be wondered at that Jesus, ab- 
sorbed in the thought of God's universal 
love and care, should say to her, in some- 
thing of surprise, " If thou knewest the 
gift of God!" 

She did not know the gift of God. She 
knew of Jacob's gift ; and it consisted of a 
certain parcel of land that J acob gave to 
his son Joseph, and a certain well, so 



76 The Uplifted Hands 

many cubits deep and so many cubits 
broad. But about that gift of God, — that 
wide domain of human sympathy within 
the soul, with a fountain of love within it 
springing up perennially unto eternal life, 
— about that gift she had never received 
any information. 

And the common sense of the world 
frankly asks : Well, what of it } Suppos- 
ing she never had learned anything about 
universal relations, is she not as happy ? 
Why disturb her by introducing this new 
set of doctrines ? Is she not satisfied with 
her surroundings ? There is the little city 
of Sychar where she lives. It is a pro- 
vincial town, and the people are just as 
happy as they would be if they knew some- 
thing about Athens and Rome and Alex- 
andria. Indeed, perhaps they are happier ; 
for now their peace of mind is not dis- 
turbed by any sense of responsibility for 
the welfare of the world outside of Sychar. 
They were a well-meaning people. They 



The Gift of God 77 

evidently attended to their own affairs, 
just as this woman attended to her own 
business, not expecting a Jew to talk with 
her upon the subject of a Jew's religion. 

But, as progressive human beings, we do 
not always have our own way about these 
matters. Wider conceptions of life and 
new beliefs sometimes come to us in spite 
.of very strong prejudices to the contrary. 
We may want to believe the old doctrines, 
but the hour comes when we simply cannot 
believe them. What we may really desire 
has little to do about it. The larger truth, 
the grander view, the nobler conviction, is 
thrust upon us, — it comes our way, and 
every generous impulse of the soul bids us 
receive it, no matter how strongly we may 
wish to do otherwise. 

Jesus came with a new presentation of 
religion, a new point of view, and a grander 
thought of God. He was irresistible. The 
woman felt that a new influence had come 
into her life. To her it seemed as if this 



78 The Uplifted Hands 

prophet knew everything. Suddenly the 
Httle, narrow, and prejudiced Samaritan 
world was expanded ; and she was, by his 
inspired touch, simply compelled to think 
upon matters to which she had evidently 
never given any attention. 

The fountain of new truth and the light 
and love of a new sort of world were gush- 
ing there in the soul of that young prophet 
who sat that day by the well ; and he simply 
allowed it to do as it would do, and perhaps 
he was as much amazed at it as were those 
who heard him speak. There were certain 
germs, seed-grains of a larger faith, lying 
dormant in the hearts of those people of 
Sychar ; and they did not know it until the 
magnetic thrill of the young prophet awak- 
ened them. No matter how happy and satis- 
fied they were before, the wand of the great 
Magician was upon them and they had to 
be aroused. They had come out to the 
well to hear him. Now they were at his 
mercy. The decree went forth. Their 



The Gift of God 79 

minds were unfettered. Somebody had 
cut the cords of superstition and provin- 
ciaUsm and tradition and bigotry that had 
bound them. The God of Mount Gerizim 
had suddenly disappeared. Now it was 
too late to call him back. Jesus must 
come to Sychar and complete his work. 
And they took him there as their guest, 
and they forgot that he was a Jew and 
they were Samaritans. A Father in heaven 
of all the world had been proclaimed in 
Sychar, and Jew and Samaritans were 
brothers only. And it was a marvellous 
visitation. All the gates of the city 
opened. The fountain had slaked a new 
kind of thirst, and it had begun to 
bubble forth within their souls. When 
they thought of their condition, — their 
provincial contentment of yesterday, — it 
seemed as if a hundred years had passed 
away. Their old, narrow limitations were 
broken down. A new life had been given, 
with new beliefs, new sympathies, new ob- 



8o The Uplifted Hands 

jects to live for, new responsibilities, to be 
sure, but with a new strength to assume 
them ; a new way to travel, but with plenty 
of light to guide them ; new cares, but with 
a new joy of action and of duty. So that, 
when at the end of a two days' visit Jesus 
came to go away, the men of the town of 
Sychar w^ent to that woman, and said, — 

" Now w^e believe, not because of thy 
speaking : for we have heard for ourselves, 
and know that this is, indeed, the Saviour 
of the world/' 

Sometimes it seems as if that same voice 
comes to us, and, half in pity and half in 
surprise, exclaims, If thou knewest the gift 
of God ! " Clearly marked, there are two 
classes of bounty of which we are the re- 
cipients. The one we may call perhaps, 
for the sake of contrast, the gift of the 
world. Jacob's well was its symbol. Other 
men had labored, and the people of Sychar 
had entered into their labors. They en- 
joyed this gift — this unstinted gift of the 



I 

The Gift of God 8i 

world — just as we enjoy it. We, too, have 
entered into the labors of other men ! Ah ! 
we cannot but think of the good and the 
true, the brave and the just who have la- 
bored, — whether willingly or unwillingly it 
matters little to you and me, so long as now 
we have entered into their labors. Many 
a Jacob's well is gushing forth for us, — 
our free nation, our wealth of public works, 
our glorious literature, our nameless mate- 
terial resources, our untrammelled con- 
science. Our homes undisturbed by mili- 
tary necessities, our free schools, our sub- 
lime history wrought out in hardships, 
peril, and sacrifice ; our long roll of heroic 
names, our great prophets and poets and 
actors and songsters, — this great gift of 
the world is too vast for us to compre- 
hend ! 

Think, too, of the many kinds of thirst 
that are quenched, — the thirst for knowl- 
edge, for freedom, for opportunity, for in- 
dividual expression in art and literature, 



82 The Uplifted Hands 

in mechanical skill and scientific experi- 
ment. How the thirst for better social 
conditions is being satisfied ; and, in relig- 
ion, how like a draught from Jacob's well 
is the new liberty of the soul to follow, 
one's own honest convictions without fear- 
ing the perils of intolerance and ecclesi- 
astical oppression ! We may call all this 
the gift of the world. It has come about 
gradually through the efforts and enter- 
prise of noble men and women struggling 
to raise one generation above another. It 
bears the same relation to us that Jacob's 
well bore to those who drank of its abun- 
dant waters. 

But now we hear, even as that woman 
of Samaria heard, and while we are think- 
ing of the magnificence of the world's great 
gift, — we hear that voice saying, **If thou 
knewest the gift of God ! " Yes, mighty 
as is the gift of the world, the gift of God 
is greater. For the one refers to the past, 
— to what men have achieved : the other 



The Gift of God 83 

refers to the future, — to what may yet be 
accompHshed. The gift of the world flat- 
ters our human pride, even as it arouses 
our sense ml gratitude. The gift of God 
is a realm of the unattained. It is the 
vision of possibility which is raised before 
us. The one gift is measurable ; for it is 
crystallized in history, it is a tale that is 
told, it is a book that is written, it is a 
song that is sung. The gift of God is the 
sum of those anticipations which every 
young prophet entertains. It is the feel- 
ing of divine power within, prompting to 
high endeavor and glorious action. It is 
the new truth gaining coherency, coming 
from the infinite mind into the human 
mind. It is the outfit and equipment of 
the soul making its splendid campaign 
through the disciplining agencies of the 
earth. It is the young Messiah looking 
forward into centuries yet unborn, fore- 
telling New Jerusalems yet unannounced, 
kingdoms of God infinitely more enticing 



84 The Uplifted Ha7ids 

and mysterious than any kingdom of the 
world. 

The gift of the world passes away in the 
bosom of the old years, but thq^ift of God 
is always new. Be the past never so glori- 
ous, so long as there are minds to think, 
hearts to love, imaginations to create new 
possibilities, so long shall the spirit of God 
be poured into the soul of man, — a foun- 
tain of ever-living water, as abundant as 
the needs of humanity ! 

Verily, If that which passeth away was 
with glory, much more that which remain- 
eth is m glory.'' 

When conversing with the woman at 
the well, Jesus represented the gift of God 
as "living water," that which contained 
life and power and spiritual refreshment in 
it. But, when the disciples came back 
from Sychar, he changed the figure and 
called it "meat," — the giver of strength 
and vitality. He said it was meat to do 
the will of him that sent him. That is. 



The Gift of God 85 

the doing of something was food. The 
soul was nourished by being used. To do 
the will of Him that sent you is to gain 
life, to possess health, to accumulate 
strength 1 One would never say. There 
are yet four months, and then cometh the 
harvest. The soul, being ready for its 
work, would find it at hand. At that mo- 
ment the young prophet, with quivering 
nerves and flashing eyes, pointed out over 
the plains, and cried, " Behold, I say unto 
you. Lift up your eyes and look on the 
fields, that they are white already unto 
harvest." 

Thus the gift of God was to come 
through service. The disciples, the woman 
of Samaria, the men of Sychar, had entered 
into the labors of their fathers, and they 
had reason to be thankful ; but to the fut- 
ure they were to set their gaze. It was 
for them a gift of God to have the power to 
do something. You have a power to 
think : put the truth into the empty or the 



86 The Uplifted Hands 

mistaken or the deluded minds of men ! 
You have vital impulses : awaken the sleep- 
ing souls of the world! You have judg- 
ment : counsel those who are stumbling and 
falling ! You have faith : bestow it upon 
the despairing ! Heal the sick, open blind 
eyes, unstop deaf ears, raise the dead ! If 
thou knewest the gift of God, a hundred 
Messiahs would come to break the fetters 
of this unjust, brutal, sin-sick, blundering 
age. The world is thirsty : give it water to 
drink ! It is hungry : give it meat to eat ! 
It is naked : clothe it ! It is imprisoned 
and it is enslaved : it is a gift of God to 
be able to set it free ! 

When Jesus sat thus by the well," he 
said certain things that made that short 
hour one of the greatest, if not the greatest, 
hour in all the history of the world. No 
point of time marked in the annals of man- 
kind was more significant than the moment 
when God was revealed as a spiritual Pres- 
ence, universal in his relations and immanent 



The Gift of God 87 

in the life of every individual. Out of that 
hour will spring the peace of the world. 
Prejudices between Samaritans and Jews 
dissolved and disappeared under the magic 
spell of that announcement. Mount Geri- 
zim and Mount Zion coalesced. The past 
with its tributes was harmonized with the 
future and its possibilities. The emphasis 
of the old-time, prophetic righteousness 
was transferred to the new-time, prophetic 
enthusiasm. The gift of the world was 
henceforth to be subordinated to the gift 
of God. To draw water from Jacob's well 
was a task, but to quench the thirst of the 
world with ^'living water" would be a 
luxury. 

What better opportunity can we desire 
than that which came that day to the men 
of Sychar } What more gracious privilege 
than to give hospitality to the gift of God ? 
With each new day comes a forward look. 
The Messiah speaks, the appeal of the 
Spirit is upon us. Jews and Samaritans, 



88 The Uplifted Hands 

Greeks and Barbarians, Patricians and 
Plebeians, the high and the low, heterodox 
and orthodox, all drink of those "living 
waters" and are transformed from con- 
tending sectarians and bitter partisans to 
spiritual kith and kin. It is the opportu- 
nity brought by untold ages of travail when 
we are summoned to entertain the *^gift of 
God." Let him speak his wonderful mes- 
sage, that we may ''hear for ourselves." 
Perhaps you shall learn the secret of his 
beatitudes, how he heals the sick, restores 
life, endures suffering, how he prays and 
how he rejoices. Perhaps we shall see into 
the great future with clearer vision, and 
gain faith. Perhaps we ' shall learn to be- 
lieve the great doctrines of the spirit as 
they are unfolded through experience. 

And then the little spot of our labors 
and our cares will no longer appear as a 
stagnant and provincial Sychar, but more 
like a precinct in the city of God. And 
we shall then say, not in any irrational or 



The Gift of God 89 

pietistic or merely theological sense, but in 
the full appreciation of the greatest event 
we have ever known, and because of a 
strange, new attitude toward life thus se- 
cured, "Now we believe, not because of 
thy speaking : for we have heard for our- 
selves, and know that this is indeed the 
Saviour of the world." 



V. 



THE PRIMAL GLORY. 

" The glory which I had with thee before the world 
was." — John xvii. 5. 

IN such expressions as these the readers 
of the New Testament have generally- 
found an exceptional meaning only. 
Words which Jesus used to describe his 
relation to God have been generally re- 
garded as words which only Jesus could 
use. The exceptional and altogether tran- 
scendent character of Jesus made it possi- 
ble, according to the teachings of Christian 
commentators, for him to speak of a mys- 
tic glory peculiar to himself, and altogether 
out of the range of ordinary human experi- 
ence. 

And yet I believe that, if we carefully 
study his efforts to make religion as he 
felt it, and as he enjoyed it, common to his 



The Primal Glory 91 

followers and to all the world, we shall be 
able to find, even in the most mystical of 
his utterances about himself, a representa- 
tive meaning. 

There are, as we all know, a multitude ' 
of widely differing opinions and doctrines 
offered the Christian world by the teachers 
of systematic theology concerning the nat- 
ure of Jesus and the place he occupies in 
the spiritual economy of mankind. This 
is so emphatically true that we may say 
that there are hardly two individuals in 
any denomination who, when his name is 
spoken, entertain the same mental image. 

And yet this fact need not in any way 
prevent him from becoming the teacher, 
exemplar, and inspirer of any person who is 
willing to accept the spirit and rhythm of 
his life. As he is portrayed in this mysti- 
cal Fourth Gospel, there are suggestions 
and hints of a spiritual sympathy between 
him and the One to whom he offered his 
wonderful prayers, which elevate us all in 



92 The Uplifted Hands 

this far-away age of the world, and make 
that oneness possible between ourselves 
and the infinite Life about us and within 
us which Jesus so earnestly prayed might 
come to pass. He does not speak merely 
for himself, but in behalf of the world, 
that all may become one with God, even as 
he is one with him, — one in spirit and 
purpose, — so that divine things may be 
done in this world by the divine in human 
nature. He is giving the world a new ap- 
preciation of itself, putting upon human 
nature the divine interpretation. He 
speaks of himself as the representative 
man ; and the secret, strange, and wonder- 
ful forces that make him appear so far un- 
like the average human being he is evi- 
dently trying to show are to some degree 
within the possible reach of even the frac- 
tional, misguided life of mankind as it is 
generally realized. 

This leads me to the conclusion that the 
text is representative. If it meant any- 



The Pfimal Glory 93 

thing definite and helpful to him, it means 
something definite and helpful to you and 
me. If the thought that before the world 
was — that is, in the very nature of things 
— he held some organic, co-operative re- 
lation to what God was doing, — if this 
thought helped him, and caused him to 
feel that his life was all the grander and 
more glorious on that account, the same 
thought can help us all. And so to-day 
I want to trace with you, even in a very 
rudimentary and merely suggestive man- 
ner, some of the ways in which we all 
share with the Father in the glory of life. 
So that some time, looking back over 
the eventful years as they have come and 
gone, we may really become conscious of 
a hidden, divine meaning in it all, and say 
the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was.'' 

In the first place, what a wonderful 
thing it is to have intelligence ! You 
know we have to be startled, and perhaps 



94 The Uplifted Hands 

frightened sometimes, before we can even 
begin to realize the commonest blessings 
of life. A man will live for years, and 
never know what it is to have good eyes 
until one day he discovers that he is be- 
coming blind. This little lamp of intel- 
ligence — this light that is within thee" 
— is such a common possession that we 
do not begin to realize its significance until 
we discover in ourselves or observe in 
others some strange dimness stealing 
over it. 

And yet all the glory of living depends 
upon it. The fact that it is so common 
does not explain the mystery of it. With- 
out it the sun would shine for us in vain. 
Without it all that lifts us above the 
brutes, and makes the earth and all that it 
contains an open book for us to read, 
would have for us no existence. The 
power to understand what God has been 
doing all these ages is the same power 
that tells us what to do. Everything we 



The Primal Glory 95 

do is merely an imitation and a new adap- 
tation of what he has done before us. 
Not one mechanical contrivance but we 
have, by reason of this intelligence, bor- 
rowed a divine idea. Not one beautiful 
arrangement of color but we have tried to 
copy something beautiful that the infinite 
Artist has created. And so it is, all through 
the complex variety of interests with which 
we have to do, — through this power of in- 
telligence, — we are sharing with him in all 
the glory of the universe. 

We are apt to speak of education in its 
relation to practical affairs, but education 
is simply the systematic effort we are mak- 
ing to partake of this divine glory. If 
you educate your boy in mathematics, you 
are giving him the power to enjoy the 
harmony, fixed order, and perfect economy 
which everywhere distinguishes the works 
of God. If you teach him the science 
of geology, you are simply leading him 
through the marvellous chambers of the 



g6 The Uplifted Hands 

past on whose walls the divine finger has 
written the record of his activities. If you 
instruct him in music or art, you are 
simply enabling him to possess more and 
more of that glory which really was his 
before the world was, but which you enable 
him to appropriate and enjoy. For there 
is a religious way of regarding education. 
Education is more than accumulation. It 
is the process of entering into the wonder- 
ful mansions and palaces of divine power 
and goodness. The process is possible 
because of this commonplace intelligence. 

You know in the Shintu temples there 
is one inner room into which only the 
holiest and highest of their priests are ever 
allowed to pass, and even then only upon 
the rarest occasion. It is their holy of 
holies. It is the most sacred spot in their 
religious institutions. You ask what that 
holy of holies contains } Placed upon that 
most secret and sacred altar is nothing but 
a simple mirror. It is the house of God ; 



The Primal Glory 97 

and yet, if one would see God there, he has 
simply to look into this little mirror. 

There is a wonderful suggestion in this 
bit of Shintu philosophy. Human intelli- 
gence is this self-same mirror. It reflects 
all that we can know about God, and it is 
the medium that conveys to us all that we 
can possess of this glory of God. It ad- 
mits us into his wisdom, his truth and love, 
and it affords us the possibility of all wor- 
ship and all happiness. It is, indeed, com- 
mon, but it is none the less inexplicable. 
It is not appreciated, and yet upon its pos- 
session by us depends all that places 
human life above that of the lowest ani- 
mals and plants. It lights up the skies 
that we may weigh the stars. It paints 
the hills, that we may love the land in 
which we live. Old ocean's gray and 
melancholy waste," with its ceaseless mys- 
teries, has a meaning and a message only 
for him who shares in the divine intelli- 
gence. To the heroic mind its storms are 



98 The Uplifted Hands 

sublime and terrible, and full of Titanic 
inspiration. To the poetic imagination its 
tides ebb and flow with the music, and with 
the tumultuous discord of human experi- 
ence. Its waves and billows to the ancient 
Psalmist were like the relentless surgings 
of despair over the helpless and prostrate 
human heart. 

This intelligence lifts the curtains of our 
inner life, where hope and prophecy and 
faith make us exclaim, The Soul ! " 
whose destiny seems so grand even when 
it is yet so puzzling. In reaUty not one of 
us has ever had a thought wholly his own. 
The very life in which we have thought at 
all is the life out of which all thought 
springs. The glory which lights up the 
universe is the glory which is made real to 
us through the thought which had its ori- 
gin and its purpose in the mind of God. 

Take, again, the emotions, the affections 
that make life worth living. From whence 
came this human love, this very common 



The Primal Glory 99 

power, whose value we do not and cannot 
fully realize, but whose awf ulness we some- 
times feel when the tie that binds is sud- 
denly broken or dissolved. What is life 
worth without it ? How rich and grand all 
our institutions become when we find them 
in some way ministering in the name of 
this all-powerful emotion ! How utterly 
meaningless is any adventure which people 
engage in which cannot show that, directly 
or indirectly, it contributes to the necessi- 
ties or pleasures of human affection 1 

Indeed, it is the whole purpose of gov- 
ernment and ethics to find an ever more 
effective way to satisfy the legitimate de- 
mands of this emotion. It makes heroes. 
It compels sacrifices. It is like the elec- 
tric fluid. Directed, controlled, refined, 
and ennobled, there is nothing grand and 
glorious which it will not foster and beau- 
tify. Misdirected, opposed, debased, there 
is nothing under heaven which it cannot 
hinder or utterly ruin ! No wonder the 



lOO The Uplifted Hands 

apostle declared that love was the law ful- 
filled ! So mighty a force was it in the 
economy and interpretation of religion that 
it has become a synonym of the spiritual 
life. There would be no aim and purpose 
in civilization if our affairs did not satisfy, 
in some measure, this tremendous energy. 
The old adage is certainly true, that *4ove 
turns the world at his caprice.'* 

Whence came it } Whence came into 
this strange human life this still more 
mysterious human love } It is as old as 
creation. And, when we came into this 
world, it was the first thing that greeted us. 
Like all things glorious, it may accomplish 
incalculable good, or, abused and defamed, 
it may become the instrument of any sin in 
the calendars of crime ; for it is fundamen- 
tal and native, — it is of the essence of life. 
We did not create it. All we can do is to 
receive it as it comes, and through a right 
care and cultivation of faculty see to it 
that it accomplishes the highest and purest 



The Primal Glory loi 

ends. We have no more to do with its 
presence in our hfe than we have to do with 
the existence of any other force, hke gravity 
or magnetism or chemical affinity. We 
simply find it here, — in God's universe, — 
the thrilling, pulsating, all-powerful energy 
that compels human activity and over- 
comes all opposition. 

It is a glory that we have with God, in 
the very nature of things. Without it we 
are nothing. Without it the thought of 
God is cold, mechanical, and cruel. And 
through and because of it we are enabled 
to share in the full glory of the divine life. 

There is still another force which means 
a great deal and fulfils the suggestions of 
the text. 

The greatest glory of anything does not 
consist in what it actually is, but in what 
it promises or anticipates. The glory of a 
child, for instance, consists in its marvel- 
lous possibilities, — its f or e-shado wings, its 
prophecies. 



102 The Uplifted Hands 

It is true, I admit, that to some the eye 
of spiritual anticipation is not open ; but I 
will not admit that to the perfect mind 
there is any human being which is not in- 
finitely greater as a prophecy than as a 
reality. It is possible, I suppose, for one 
to be temporarily content, — to desire no 
new achievement, to wish to gain no 
further victories. But content with any 
present glory is necessarily only temporary. 
The world changes, and we change. Or, 
if in this ceaseless movement we choose 
to remain content (if that were possible), 
we are very soon abandoned by our environ- 
ment, as surely as Rip Van Winkle was 
abandoned by the world he went to sleep in. 

There are, possibly, such things as spirit- 
ual Rip Van Winkles, who are sleeping on 
from year to year while this tumultuous 
world sweeps by them with its fierce dis- 
regard of every perishable object of the 
past. Perhaps they fell on sleep fifteen, 
twenty, thirty years ago under the stupefy- 



The Primal Glory 103 

ing influence of that unscientific material- 
ism which boldly declared that where there 
was no phosphorus there could be no 
thought. It may have been their misfort- 
une to have lost spiritual consciousness in 
that perplexing and painful intellectual rev- 
olution which exchanged many a great 
world-theory for the simple and orderly and 
beautiful world-process from the lower to 
the higher manifestations of life. The 
great world of ideality, with its ever-deep- 
ening mysteries accompanied with its ever- 
grander promises, has moved on and left 
them sleeping. New heavens have ap- 
peared with infinitely more blessed assur- 
ances, and they know it not. A new 
earth calling for higher types of devotion 
and a more strenuous co-operation with 
God has come into being; but, because 
they are spiritually asleep, they do not 
hear the command. 

But this is arrested development, and it 
does not represent the law of life. The 



I04 The Uplifted Hands 

law of life — that is, the law of spiritual con- 
sciousness — is the law of promise and ex- 
pectation, it is the groaning and travaihng 
of creation in expectation of the revealings 
of the sons of men. That is religion. It is 
a fundamental principle of growth, and it is 
of the same kind and nature as the divine 
life itself. 

First, a new idea. Secondly, a great af- 
fection. And then hope and the never- 
ceasing expectation of endless revelation. 
First, an idea out of the foundation of the 
world, — a divine idea, an idea of God's. 
Then comes the irresistible pressure of a 
living impulse, — a great love to put that 
idea into practical effect. Under the stress 
of this impulse we go forth to make other 
human beings as free as we are ourselves 
or to gain for ourselves a broader and 
more beautiful field of belief and faith. 

The glory of a human soul consists in 
this ceaseless power to look ahead and to 
anticipate. The only legitimate content- 



The Primal Glory 105 

merit we are entitled to is contentment 
with true progress. The only legitimate 
hope of human life is a hope for a larger 
world. Our peace, — it is not illogical to say 
it, — our peace comes by tribulation. For 
paralysis is not salvation. To look forth 
for nothing more perfect than these blun- 
dering efforts and these paltry achieve- 
ments is abhorrent to every spiritual as- 
piration. Religion comes with its ever-re- 
curring hunger that we may seek bread 
and live. When Jesus came that we might 
have more abundant life, it was a natural 
law that he represented. For new and 
more abundant life is never content with 
the past or present. It matters little what 
you or I may say about our religion : if it 
does not reveal itself in some desire on our 
part to fulfil the utmost prophecies of 
human nature, it is only a poor, mistaken 
mumbling of professions. 

Whence comes this human expectation ? 
We did not create it. It is a fundamental 



io6 The Uplifted Hands 

characteristic of creation. It was here 
when the ascidian mollusk reached out its 
almost formless antennae, and by that ef- 
fort became the possessor of a new power. 
It has been the constant factor of evolution 
from the first evidence of organic life to 
the present time. In some measure it has 
characterized alike the first division of cells 
to form a more complex physical organism 
and the vast energy that moved in the 
brain of Tennyson when he wrote " In Me- 
moriam." This effort, looking forward, — 
reaching upward, seeking to bring the ideal 
down to the real and to carry the real up 
to the ideal, — it is the glory which has 
been with God from the foundation of the 
world, and in which you and I share in 
some measure to-day. 

There is power in this consciousness of 
sharing with God in the glory of life. I 
do not suppose that any man has ever 
deliberately given his life for a principle, 
or made any great sacrifice for an idea, 



The Primal Glory * 107 

who has not felt that he was keeping an 
account with a more than human power. 

It is a condition of our nature that, 
while on one side of it we feel the pressure 
of humanity and have regard for what 
people may say of us or think about us, 
there is another side to our life which 
somehow stands or falls before a greater 
than any human tribunal. On the one 
side we are misjudged, under or over 
estimated, ridiculed or applauded, as the 
case may be. To have this experience 
may be pleasant or it may be bitter. But 
there is one thing about it, — it is a fickle 
and fallible portion that humanity offers. 
No human being can adequately judge and 
estimate and brand another human being. 

To-day one may ride into his Jerusalem 
on the hosannas of the multitude, and to- 
morrow the same throng may cry, * Cru- 
cify him ! ' " 

But what touches us on this side of life 
we can bear. We can live with or without 



I08 The Uplifted Hands 

human approval. The glory man has with 
man is not from the foundation of the 
world. It is only the shimmer upon the 
surface of the sea of life. But it is not so 
on the other side — the deep, introspective 
side — of human nature. So grave, funda- 
mental, mighty was the necessity that 
Jesus felt, upon the unseen and unknown 
side of his life, to stand through all vicissi- 
tudes and not fall before God, and so little 
did he care to please humanity for the 
mere pleasure he could get out of it, that 
he exclaimed, ^'Woe unto you when all 
men speak well of you ! " 

But before God he must and would 
stand. He must and did have glory with 
him, whatever humanity might think of him. 

This is what I mean by saying there is 
power in this consciousness. This we 
must have in some measure if we would be 
triumphant in the struggle of experience. 
Have that side right. Let our relations 
with men be pleasant, if possible ; but they 



The Primal Glory 109 

must be harmonious upon the divine side, 
else the soul itself is defrauded ! 

A great idea. That is the way. It is 
the chart. It is the first great necessity 
of progress. A true and well-directed 
emotion, — that is the motive power. And 
the promise of victory, — the hope of reach- 
ing vaster and loftier and diviner domains, 
— that is the purpose of life. God alone 
knows the full meaning of that purpose. 
But we can live in the great thought of its 
unrevealed glory, and we can doubt not 
that it will prove at last to be in accord 
with the fashion of his unspeakable fulfil- 
ments. 

What, if not this expectation, could have 
been the impulse of that cry of the Master's 
when he saw this human glory completed 
and matured through the discipline of suf- 
fering and pain, and announced that the 
time was come for him to take his place at 
the right hand of all love and power ? 

What but this expectation, hidden in 



no The Uplifted Hands 

the irresistible forward look of mankind, 
can account for that grand tenacity and 
that victorious persistency with which men 
cling to principle and to what they are 
pleased to call their personal honor and 
self-respect ? Take it out of life, and life 
would indeed become **flat, stale, and un- 
profitable." Moral heroism and spiritual 
ambition would alike perish and the con- 
flict of greed and cruelty would become 
triumphant. 

But to feel ourselves immersed in the 
flood of divine life, and by our personal 
determination swept on, with all the no- 
bility of the past, into all that shall prove 
good and true and sure in the future, is 
to have a partnership with one with whom 
life is the supreme opportunity and death 
only one of its necessary incidents. 

My brief message to-day, then, is simply 
this. Account yourselves more of God 
than men and women. Men and women, 
as such here and now, are as transient as 



The Primal Glory 1 1 1 

the morning dew, which rises and disap- 
pears in the hght of the golden sun. We 
come forth by no fiat of our own, and after 
a few wonderful years we are lost to 
human touch and vision. We are little or 
nothing if we are only human. 'We are 
less and less when we think of ourselves 
as beginning and ending in humanity. In 
that thought our work is pitifully insignifi- 
cant. It is at best but a poor working 
hypothesis to conduct our lives upon the 
plane of present personal mortality, with its 
ever-present limitations. As Jesus was 
great because he brought the thought and 
consciousness of God into the humblest 
expressions of human life, so our lives are 
worthy of our hopes and ideals only as we 
are able to think of them and express them 
in divine terms. It is said that, when 
Michel Angelo would hew the form divine 
out of the shapeless block of marble, he 
placed in his paper cap a little lamp to dis- 
sipate his own shadow, that else might fall 



112 The Uplifted Hands 

upon his work and confuse and dis- 
tort its immortal beauty. May we not 
place on our brows the bright light of a 
great idea, a transcendent belief, — the 
thought of God and of sharing in his glory, 
of being in harmony with all that he has or 
ever will accomplish ? and then our work, 
instead of seeming unrelated, and unat- 
tached, will be carried on where no 
shadow of selfishness and personal little- 
ness shall prevent the creation of the di- 
vine image that we are meant to become. 
And that greatest glory will come to us as 
a balm and comfort to our hearts, — the 
full and completed sense of immortality, 
the final object of faith, and the glorious 
goal of that life expectation which has been 
hidden in the nature of things since the 
world began. 

That will be the re-creation and the ful- 
filment of the glory which we have had 
with God before the world was. 



VI. 



THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 
OF HEAVEN. 



I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven." — Matthew xiv. 19. 



E have in this passage, apparently, 



? y a report of one of the few reported 
heart-to-heart talks which Jesus had with 
his disciples. According to Matthew it 
comes after they had been together for 
some time. Jesus had described the nat- 
ure of his mission in various ways, but 
he had most often employed the Oriental 
method of parabolic instruction, present- 
ing his ideas by means of symbols, figures 
of speech, and mental pictures and stories 
with fictitious characters. Such methods 
were the ones most generally adopted by 
the teachers of religion and morals. But 
his views of the kingdom of God were so 




114 The Uplifted Hands 

different from those most commonly held 
that he was being constantly misunder- 
stood and incorrectly reported. His own 
claims were misjudged, and the interpreta- 
tion he gave to the national conception of 
a " Messiah " was, even by his most inti- 
mate friends, constantly being overlooked 
or only vaguely apprehended. And this 
instance here when Jesus is represented 
as plying the disciples with questions 
seems to indicate that he was giving them 
something like a special examination to see 
how far they comprehended his doctrine 
and the character of his own personality. 

Probably we have here only the scantiest 
sort of a report of the conversation which 
actually took place. One of the questions 
he asked was, Who do men say that the 
son of man is .^^ " or, as some of the old 
manuscripts have it, *'Who do men say 
that this son of man is .^^ " or, as we should 
say without using the Oriental idiom, Who 
do men say I am V " What do they think 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 115 

of me ? Where do they place me ? " And 
they replied, " Some say John the Baptist, 
some Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the 
other prophets come to life again." For 
it was a popular belief then that the souls 
of great men sometimes returned and con- 
tinued their work in the guise of living 
teachers. But now he says, " Who do you 
think I am " And the impetuous Peter 
replies, **Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God." This answer pleased 
Jesus. It showed that Peter had caught 
the right idea, — that the representative of 
these new interpretations of the kingdom 
of God, this prophet of ethical and spirit- 
ual truth, came the nearest to a proclama- 
tion of the divine idea. He illustrated in 
his own teaching and conduct what God 
would best like to have his children realize. 
And so he commends Peter for his clear 
understanding of the matter, — as one 
would say : You are a man after my 
own heart. You see clearly what I am 



1 16 The Uplifted Hands 

trying to accomplish. And, because you 
see clearly, I will trust you to represent me 
when I am gone. You have the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven, you possess the secret 
of my instructions, you are prepared to 
continue my work." In other words, the 
examination showed that Peter was ready 
to be graduated from the wonderful school 
he had been attending. He used a fami- 
liar Yabbinical metaphor here : Whatso- 
ever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou 
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
heaven." **To the rabbis belonged the 
right to determine what the law allowed 
and what it disallowed, or, as they ex- 
pressed it, to bind and to loose!' So that 
this passage means simply this : " You 
understand my teachings so well that what 
you shall say is forbidden on earth is the 
thing that ought to be forbidden in the 
very nature of things. And what you 
shall say is allowable is, in the very nature 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 117 

of things, permitted. You know the differ- 
ence between the eternally right and the 
eternally wrong, and you can therefore be 
trusted to go on with my cause/' Jesus 
ascertained in this conference that he had 
succeeded in preparing at least one of his 
followers to preach the new gospel. And 
from that time on, we are told, he had a 
pretty clear premonition that he would not 
himself be tolerated by the civil ' and 
ecclesiastical authorities for any great 
length of time. The conference came to 
an end by his charging the disciples not 
to spread the report that he was the Christ. 
He was not ready for that as yet. For, 
as soon as that claim became widely known, 
he would, he knew perfectly well, suffer 
the fate of others who had announced 
themselves the Christ. 

Now, taking the matter all in all, what 
are we to understand by the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven " ? 

You all know how the western world 



Ii8 The Uplifted Hands 

took up the idea and invested it in all sorts 
of absurd and materialistic conceptions. 
Forgetting what Jesus meant by the king- 
dom of heaven, Peter has been represented 
— and seriously, too — as the keeper of the 
gate of the celestial paradise. Artists 
have painted him with a girdle about 
the loins and a large bunch of keys 
hanging at his side. The Church of Rome 
has claimed him for its patron saint and his 
successors, the popes, as the hereditary 
possessors of those keys entitling them to 
be the sole interpreters of the will of God 
on earth. In all sorts of grotesque and 
whimsical methods, Peter has been made 
to illustrate a purely materialistic and ir- 
rational explanation of this scene in the 
life of Jesus and his apostles. And yet, as 
soon as one stops and considers the matter 
clearly, as soon as one recalls how con- 
stantly Jesus used familiar expressions and 
symbols to teach the highest spiritual 
truths, the whole subject becomes simplicity 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 119 

itself. He was conversing with his disci- 
ples not as the founder of an organization, 
not as the maker of schemes, not as a the- 
ologian, and not as an ecclesiastic, but 
simply as a friend and teacher trying to 
improve human life, and to overcome the 
cruelties, the wrongs, and the miseries of 
the world. He used this reference to 
keys because it was a familiar figure. 
Those to whom he spoke knew perfectly 
well what he meant. "A key was an- 
ciently used as a symbol of power and wis- 
dom.'' Isaiah employed the same imagery : 
And the key of the house of David will 
I lay upon his shoulder ; and he shall open, 
and none shall shut ; and he shall shut, and 
none shall open." Luke wrote, "Woe 
unto you lawyers ! for ye took away the 
key of knowledge : ye entered not in your- 
selves, and them that were entering in ye 
hindered." And in Revelation the pas- 
sage which I have used from Isaiah was 
quoted almost word for word. **When 



120 The Uplifted Hands 

the Jews invested a man with the authority 
of doctor of the law, they gave him the 
key of the closet in the temple where the 
sacred books were kept, to intimate that 
they intrusted him with power to explain 
the scriptures and teach the people." 

It was a reference to a well-known usage 
in the ritual of the Temple ; and, in refer- 
ring to it, Jesus simply means that he is 
now satisfied that Peter can be trusted to 
convey his teachings. It does not mean 
that Peter is to have any authority that 
the other disciples may not possess. He is 
simply one of the first of many graduates. 
For, in a few pages farther on, when Jesus 
sent all his disciples on their first mission- 
ary journey, what he says here to Peter, 
he says to them all, — " Verily I say unto 
you, what things soever ye shall bind on 
earth shall be bound in heaven ; and what 
things soever ye shall loose on earth shall 
be loosed in heaven." There are many 
other passages that show beyond all ques- 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 121 

tion that to Peter was not given any au- 
thority that the other disciples did not pos- 
sess in equal measure. 

But, to leave any further commentary 
upon the passage itself, is there any sense 
in which we may possess these keys of the 
kingdom of heaven ? For the kingdom of 
heaven is not entered merely through the 
Jewish Temple, nor through the papal pre- 
rogative, nor through Protestant schemes, 
but by the possession of certain virtues 
that are common to all mankind. One 
needs only to examine the descriptions 
that Jesus gave of that kingdom to be 
convinced that it is not an organized, local 
affair, but a life habit, a spiritual develop- 
ment. 

One of the keys that he laid great stress 
upon was the key of faithfulness The 
man who had learned to be faithful pos- 
sessed the secret of getting in to the king- 
dom of heaven, — he had a key that would 



122 The Uplifted Hajids 

open its gate. Sometimes we hear of the 
weakness and the defects of people. They 
fail to make the record that is expected of 
them. For some reason or other they sink 
below the standard, in their relations with 
their fellow-men, that we think they ought 
to maintain. We are surprised that they 
yield to some particular sins, either of 
commission or omission. And they are, 
accordingly, and somewhat thoughtlessly, 
condemned, — condemned in a vague and 
general way that places them beyond the in- 
timate friendship of good men and women. 
But I have often been surprised, when I 
have had occasion to look carefully into 
the life of some such individual, to find 
that in some particular he or she may be 
living a life of ceaseless self-sacrifice, and 
may sometimes be faithful to some task 
which could be nothing short of a burden. 
There are, or I mistake the real nature of 
Christianity, a good many keys to the 
kingdom of heaven. I do not believe 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 123 

there are many people who possess them 
all. Heaven fronts in every direction, and 
its gates are many. And so my mind 
goes back some five-and-twenty years, and 
I enter the house of an old man who, 
somehow or other, lost caste in his early 
days. He was a sort of Yankee trader, 
and he had so many faults that nobody 
ever thought of calling him very good or 
of giving him credit as a Christian. And 
I remember how surprised I was when I 
came to realize what the old man was 
really doing. I can remember three poor, 
degenerate, woe-begone men who, after 
some years of dissipation, mere wrecks of 
once promising manhood, came there, and 
lived and died under his roof. Cast out 
by their old associates, disowned by their 
relatives, complete victims of passion and 
circumstance, they came back to their na- 
tive town ; and his seemed to be the only 
door that would open, and his roof was the 
only one that would shelter them in sick- 



124 'T^^^ uplifted Hands 

ness and death. I cannot remember a 
time when this rough old man did not har- 
bor some hopelessly sick man or woman. 
He had a great many faults, but I have 
come to remember him as one of the great 
men of my boyhood's memory. I do not 
know what his errors had been, — if I ever 
knew, I have forgotten them, — and only 
the memory of his great, big neighborly 
heart comes to my mind. And I have 
often wondered how a perfect judge would 
have dealt with him. Would not such a 
judge, who could grasp all the evidence, 
who could do justice to the priceless pub- 
lic demand for righteousness and at the 
same time estimate the exact scope of 
individual responsibility, — would not such 
a judge at last find what no one else 
seemed to find, — a key, one key, in the old 
man's heart that would fit one of the locks 
of the kingdom of heaven.?^ Faithful to 
his idea of humanity, a Good Samaritan 
many times over, coarse, rough, profane. 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 125 

but as tender-hearted as a mother, for the 
good that was in him would not a perfect 
judge say, " Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto these my Httle or feeble ones, ye 
have done it unto me "? 

In how many ways this key of faithful- 
ness turns ! It calls for loyalty to some- 
thing that costs some resolution, some per- 
severance, some disagreeable activity on our 
part. What a glorious thing it is in the 
hands of a young man ! Youth is the pro- 
phetic season, and the imagination leaps 
into the future and builds castles in Spain 
and pledges the soul to such lofty deeds 
that older people smile inwardly at their 
audacity. But all things are possible to 
youth and virtue, and the young man 
thinks he is to be the one exception on 
earth where early pledges shall be kept and 
the castles in Spain be taken. And it is 
a grand thing when certain pure ideals 
of personal honor stand out so clearly that 
the young soul accepts them as his guid- 



126 The Uplifted Hands 

ing stars. Many a man has done it. 
Washington did it. Charles Sumner did 
it. Garfield did it. What a splendid 
career, — to be faithful to those early 
promises ! How like a life-boat such a 
life appears ! When the time comes, it 
pushes out into the deep. There are days 
of calm and nights of serenity and peace 
when the line of least resistance leads al- 
ways toward the beautiful beacons of 
rectitude and personal honor. But, sooner 
or later, all sorts of weather must be en- 
countered. Days when the sea is cold 
and gray and the voyage seems to be lead- 
ing to nothing. Fogs that thicken around 
until the mind cannot tell virtue from vice, 
any more than one can tell the sea from 
the land. Days of storm and stress 
when danger signals blow and toll all about, 
while the tempests of ambition and the 
fury of worldly competition drive your 
craft like madness toward the rocks of 
compromise and dishonor ; and strange 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 127 

days, too, when everywhere the sea is 
making for a storm — from who knows 
whither ? — and when it is as hard to tell 
from whence come these impulses of self- 
deception as it is to tell from whence come 
the sounds of the mysterious rote that 
grinds the rocks upon some distant coast. 

But what a sublime thing is such a life, 
faithful unto the last, — faithful and true in 
the foulest weather, constant and de- 
termined on the brightest day, faithful 
even unto the last when the great head- 
lands rise up out of the sea and the ship 
comes in over the bar ! 

Faithfulness is a key to the kingdom of 
heaven. So far as actual human knowl- 
edge may be concerned, the wisest man 
on earth must at times have his dubious 
moments. And the common run of us, — 
when we consider how little we really know 
about human life, how much we only half 
know, and the vast outlying regions where 
the human mind has never ventured, — at 



128 The Uplifted Hands 

such a time it must be worth a great deal 
to be convinced that with this single key of 
faithfulness we can unlock all that is truly 
celestial. It is only one of many gates, to 
be sure, but it leads to all the rest ; and, if 
one can be sure of it, he can never be with- 
out hope. Select even one cause, one good 
enterprise, one beneficent trust, one con- 
stant duty, and it is as certain to guide the 
soul to the land of the blessed as the north 
star was bound to guide the fugitive slave 
to freedom and safety. 

There is another key to the kingdom of 
heaven that Jesus had more to say about 
than he did about this key of faithfulness. 
The gate it unlocks is even more beauti- 
ful than the other. It is the key of love. 
There are a great many keys that I might 
describe, like humility, mercy, faith, rev- 
erence; but, while all these keys fit their 
own respective gates and all open into the 
heavenly place at last, there is only one 
master key that will open all the gates be- 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 129 

sides its own particular one. And that is 
the key of love. It is the key that God 
uses when he would get into the human 
heart, and he in turn insists that we shall 
use it whenever we would enter the king- 
dom of heaven by more than one gate. 
Faith to move mountains, hope to cheer 
the darkest gloom, are blessed ; but love is 
greater than either. I do not refer to the 
variable sentiment that is sometimes called 
love. I refer to a force that holds the 
world together. It seems paradoxical to 
say it, but this divine love that is gradually 
subduing the wildernesses of human life is 
not afraid of the wrath of man. It is the 
great love that forces reforms upon the 
world and imposes enormous responsibili- 
ties upon nations, even at the risk of suf- 
fering and crucifixion. Was the great Ger- 
man surgeon a hater or a lover of little 
children, that he should wreak his tremen- 
dous strength upon their misplaced mem- 
bers, and subject them to indescribable 



130 The Uplifted Hands 

pain ? One can imagine, on the contrary, 
the agony of his own heart that would al- 
most break in the midst of its ministries of 
mercy. The great divine love, we must 
not forget, is a love that suffereth long 
and is kind. Who but God touched the 
mother's heart with this nameless capacity 
to love and to suffer Who but the Al- 
mighty gave a father the burden of a love 
that can never forget 1 Love does all the 
great things in this world, provides all the 
luxuries, arranges all the legitimate pleas- 
ures, accomplishes all the unwelcome tasks, 
bears all the most dreadful insults, endures 
all the wrongs, suffers all the ingratitude, 
overlooks all the meannesses, pardons the 
most deadly follies, hopes and serves and 
dies with the prayer of forgiveness upon 
its lips. What circumstance can defeat it? 
Will poverty.? No. Will crime.? No. 
Where love comes as a guest, there is good 
cheer unto the end. Love is the last guest 
at every real feast of human joy. Honor 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 131 

may leave, respect may say farewell," ad- 
miration may depart, — all the guests may 
go their several ways ; but love remains, — 
remains even when the lights burn low, 
and every other human sympathy may have 
become a thing of the past. 

Oh, what an awful thing it is — so like 
the elemental forces — that draws us and 
keeps us and makes memory its slave, and 
persecution and martyrdom its willing 
tools ! What can it mean if it is not 
meant to open for all who have once pos- 
sessed it those gates of the Eternal City 
where every misery of this present life 
shall find its redeeming joy ? 

After love the keys of the heavenly 
kingdom call for no further treatment. 
The great principles underlying all ages 
and all habits of thought remain always 
the same. The keys of the kingdom of 
heaven are always the same. Faithfulness, 
love, patience, self-sacrifice, loyalty, are es- 
sentially changeless. They must forever 



132 The Uplifted Hands 

open the gates of genuine blessedness. 
And, when Jesus yielded himself to the 
martyrdom which a fickle and short-sighted 
generation imposed upon him, he did it in 
the full conviction that through his death 
the world would eventually realize the dif- 
ference between the transient and the per- 
manent, between the short-lived customs, 
fashions, doctrines, and temporary mechan- 
isms whereby we meet the demands of a 
day, and the eternal laws whereby God 
preserves the sanity, the moral tone, and 
the spiritual life of the race. If ever any 
Christian church has had placed in its 
keeping the task of emphasizing what is 
permanent as distinguished from what is 
transient, that church is blest. In an age 
when almost nothing is original, when imi- 
tations are often more popular than that 
which is genuine, when art and music and 
literature and architecture and modes are 
but adaptations of original things, when 
the tendency is to live lightly, think super- 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 133 ' 

ficially, and to be governed by caprice 
rather than conviction, it is our splendid 
opportunity to champion those eternal ver- 
ities for which the great Teacher so will- 
ingly surrendered his life. In other 
words, it is our great privilege to put peo- 
ple into possession of the keys of the king- 
dom of heaven, and to assist them in using 
those keys. 

How easy it is to possess those keys, 
but how difficult it is to keep them 
where they can be used before the oc- 
casion for using them has passed away ! 
This accounts for the numberless regrets 
that we carry with us from year to year. 
Even Peter, who, if anybody, possessed 
the keys of the heavenly kingdom, was 
caught more than once when he could not 
get his key in hand in time to open the 
gate of heavenly peace and blessedness. 
And how many years he must have lived 
just disgusted with himself for not being 
ready when the key was wanted ! We are 



134 TJ^^ Uplifted Ha7ids 

like passengers who have misplaced their 
tickets. It is not that they did not buy 
tickets, but they cannot tell where they 
have put them. That is how much trouble 
comes into this world. When we should 
have had our patience where we could 
have used it, we forgot all about it. It 
was the right key at the time, and it would 
have fitted exactly the gate of heaven, — it 
would have prevented trouble, misery, 
hate. When we should have had the key 
of self-control well in hand, we cast some 
word of vituperation or half -balanced judg- 
ment, and heaven was lost ! We look 
back over a stretch of some months, and we 
say : " What a fool, that I have not been 
using my key of faithfulness to some good 
cause or institution ! How much I might 
have done ! What a splendid chance I 
have missed ! " The key of kindly, friendly 
thoughtfulness, — we all have it. Only we 
misplace it and forget it. The hour passes 
when a touch of friendship, — a kind word, 



Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 135 

a friendly letter, a simple rose, an affec- 
tionate visit or call,- — and heaven is missed ! 
Our friends, old and young, pass away. 
How often can we remember them, and re- 
member, too, how easy it had been to have 
added a little heavenly blessedness to their 
lives ! We meant to do it before they 
died, but we did not happen to get hold of 
the right key at the right time. 

These may seem like trivial things, but 
they are the components of heaven on 
earth. And they are the things for which 
Jesus gave his life. 

The best we can do is not to ask for 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, but 
to have those that we already possess 
where we can use them when wanted. 
Until life becomes a heavenly habit. It 
is not impossible. Thousands have done 
it, and they have made the paths of 
human experience bright and smooth. 
Given these keys, given the alertness 
and the good sense to use them when most 



136 The Uplifted Hands 

needed, and there is no church, no society, 
no neighborhood on earth, that would have 
any occasion to look for the second com- 
ing of Christ. His death would be indeed 
transcended. He would be back here 
again, walking and talking with men, 
teaching his glorious parables of practical 
life anew, inspiring with the beautiful 
spirit of old thousands of his followers, and 
combining a new earth with a new heaven. 

Fortunate, indeed, is that season which 
carries us back to some hour of trium- 
phant suffering, if at the same time it 
sends us forward into many days of trium- 
phant loyalty and labor. Like Peter of 
old, who fell from grace so many times, 
let us at last tie the girdle of discipleship 
with its many keys securely at our side, 
that we may henceforth have them at 
instant command when the weary pilgrims 
of the world come toiling slowly up the 
road. 



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